Yeah, I actually got kind of excited, too. It was stupid of me to think that they were actually going to change something that matters.
It seems like Mozilla does nothing but try to piss off their old-school users, while ineffectually trying to appeal to Chrome users. Some of their changes have been good, and some have even been great, but the vast majority have just been perplexing.
The director is known for intelligent and creative science fiction films, which kind of puzzles me. Why, if you had that kind of reputation, would you make a film based on an MMORPG? There must either be a huge budget (which would be tempting to work with, after the smaller productions, I suppose) or a very good script. Despite my cynicism, I choose to believe that the script is insightful and well-written. Unfortunately, Wikipedia says the budget is around $220M, which makes my cynicism increasingly difficult to ignore. On the other hand, if they're spending this much money, they're probably going to try to do it right.
Hell, I think voting is kind of pointless, but I was trying to limit myself to just Internet activism.
Regardless, I finally voted again, in 2012, after 20 years of boycotting the voting booth. It felt as pointless as ever, but I got a nice sticker that says I voted.
I agree that it seems that way, at first. However, it seems unlikely to actually affect meaningful change. More likely, it will either be ignored or eliminated. A petition has just as much chance of scaring politicians into changing their behavior, and it doesn't bring about connotations of vigilantism and what I suspect will come to be known as "Internet terrorism".
Signing Internet petitions is only marginally less useless and pointless than harassing government employees. In fact, if I made a list of the most pointless activism on Internet, they would be:
1. Printing form letters and mailing them to Congresspeople 2. Writing e-mails to Congresspeople 3. Signing Internet petitions 4. Complaining loudly on Internet forums 5. Hacking and vandalism 6. Publishing a batshit crazy manifesto 7. DDOSing the government 8. Sending death threats via e-mail
That's in vague order of (comparatively) least pointless to most pointless.
Increasingly, people only seem to care about being outraged, anyway. Just look at all the blogs out there -- they're basically nothing more than "outrage of the day" articles, cynically designed to appeal to shallow, emotional outbursts. Slashdot is often guilty of this, as well. I'm not sure whether this trend took hold in Old Media or New Media first, but it has totally dominated New Media, and now the Old Media are struggling to stay relevant, by showing they can be just as fluffy and reactionary as the New Media. In some ways, I think this is just a natural progression of trends started in the 1990s. Hell, maybe it started a lot earlier than that, but that's when I remember things getting worse. My parents would probably say it started around 60s or 70s.
Thank you for starting us off with a whiny, misogynist rant. Now that that's taken care of, maybe we can move on to discussing the more important topics.
You have to admit that we do tend to be a bit eccentric, at best.
I'd be curious to see what percentage of low-UID Slashdotters have been professionally diagnosed with mental illness. To be fair, it's probably not much worse than the goons at Something Awful.
the beginning of FB has already begun. Not that i'm complaining.
Greetings, my friend. We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future. You are interested in the unknown... the mysterious. The unexplainable. That is why you are here. And now, for the first time, we are bringing to you, the full story of what happened on that fateful day. We are bringing you all the evidence, based only on the secret testimony, of the miserable souls, who survived this terrifying ordeal. The incidents, the places. My friend, we cannot keep this a secret any longer. Let us punish the guilty. Let us reward the innocent. My friend, can your heart stand the shocking facts of grave robbers from outer space?
I was actually pleasantly surprised by their prices. $79 really isn't all that bad. I remember these keyboards costing more than that, back in the 1980s, and inflation means that this is actually a huge bargain. Then again, everything but the Commodore 64 was overpriced as hell, back in those days.
So what? You found a group of second wave feminists that are anti-porn, with their positions exaggerated by a sensationalist story.
It's not like that's a rare occurrence. For decades, Andrea Dworkin was dogged by the urban myth that she said "all sex is rape".
There are socially conservative feminists (first and second wave), socially liberal feminists (third wave), and lots of splinter groups that are somewhere in between. There is bitter, intense in-fighting between these groups, and there are quite a few feminists who'd agree with you that anti-porn crusaders have given feminism a bad name.
For what it's worth, the current vanguard is actually quite tolerant of porn. They generally call themselves "sex positive feminists".
I don't think you understand how politics and police in a big city work.
There's the police force that the poor get, the police force that the middle class get, and the police force that the rich get. Generally, when cops come into poor neighborhoods, it's to bash heads. In middle class neighborhoods, you get sympathetic cops who politely explain that they're too busy to investigate your report. In the rich neighborhoods, they drop everything in order to find your missing poodle.
Of course it's biased in the way that it's stated. Many of the statements on the quiz are very strongly worded, with an extreme bias toward some political viewpoint. That's how they tell how far along the axis (left/right, authoritarian/libertarian) to put you. If you agree with the highly biased statements, you get labeled as an ideologue. If you disagree with them, you get moved back to the center.
However, I generally agree with you that Political Compass is somewhat biased toward European sensibilities. Also, the test is not a good measure of extremism. If you answer extremist left and extremist right answers positively, you get placed in the center, along with all the wishy-washy moderates.
How did you score? I'm usually in the (-7, -7) range, but recently I seem to have been radicalized and end up even more deeply into anarchist territory (-9, -9).
Do people actually believe that nonsense? Obama is left, not left center, not center, left. The majority of what he does is extremely partisan, which is why many believe he may officially be the most divisive president in history.
You're right about the extremists and the nutjobs, who seem to be controlling the Republican party these days, but there are a lot of moderates that can be swayed over to the Republican side, given a strong enough issue. The Republicans tried their hardest to manufacture one with Benghazi, but nobody cared. Releasing dangerous terrorists back into the wild? That could really take hold.
I agree with you. He should stop compromising with nutjobs and extremists, grow a spine, and finally do something liberal. However, doing so could very well throw the 2016 election. The Democratic Party would rather hold on to power than do the right thing. That's why I vote with the Greens, even if they are nutjob hippies. Out of all the nutjobs out there, I think I probably agree with those nutjobs the most.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, I actually got kind of excited, too. It was stupid of me to think that they were actually going to change something that matters.
It seems like Mozilla does nothing but try to piss off their old-school users, while ineffectually trying to appeal to Chrome users. Some of their changes have been good, and some have even been great, but the vast majority have just been perplexing.
The director is known for intelligent and creative science fiction films, which kind of puzzles me. Why, if you had that kind of reputation, would you make a film based on an MMORPG? There must either be a huge budget (which would be tempting to work with, after the smaller productions, I suppose) or a very good script. Despite my cynicism, I choose to believe that the script is insightful and well-written. Unfortunately, Wikipedia says the budget is around $220M, which makes my cynicism increasingly difficult to ignore. On the other hand, if they're spending this much money, they're probably going to try to do it right.
Hell, I think voting is kind of pointless, but I was trying to limit myself to just Internet activism.
Regardless, I finally voted again, in 2012, after 20 years of boycotting the voting booth. It felt as pointless as ever, but I got a nice sticker that says I voted.
I agree that it seems that way, at first. However, it seems unlikely to actually affect meaningful change. More likely, it will either be ignored or eliminated. A petition has just as much chance of scaring politicians into changing their behavior, and it doesn't bring about connotations of vigilantism and what I suspect will come to be known as "Internet terrorism".
Signing Internet petitions is only marginally less useless and pointless than harassing government employees. In fact, if I made a list of the most pointless activism on Internet, they would be:
1. Printing form letters and mailing them to Congresspeople
2. Writing e-mails to Congresspeople
3. Signing Internet petitions
4. Complaining loudly on Internet forums
5. Hacking and vandalism
6. Publishing a batshit crazy manifesto
7. DDOSing the government
8. Sending death threats via e-mail
That's in vague order of (comparatively) least pointless to most pointless.
We shouldn't have to click on the links, just to understand what the summary is about.
"Will donglegate affect your decision to attend pycon?"
vs
"Will the controversy over alleged sexism affect your decision to attend pycon?"
Hmm. Good point. Next time, I'll remember to ramp up the emotional content.
Opinions are cheap. Reporters cost money.
Increasingly, people only seem to care about being outraged, anyway. Just look at all the blogs out there -- they're basically nothing more than "outrage of the day" articles, cynically designed to appeal to shallow, emotional outbursts. Slashdot is often guilty of this, as well. I'm not sure whether this trend took hold in Old Media or New Media first, but it has totally dominated New Media, and now the Old Media are struggling to stay relevant, by showing they can be just as fluffy and reactionary as the New Media. In some ways, I think this is just a natural progression of trends started in the 1990s. Hell, maybe it started a lot earlier than that, but that's when I remember things getting worse. My parents would probably say it started around 60s or 70s.
I got cyberspace, cyberwarfare, virtual, and cyber command.
Also: "begs the question" does not mean what you think it means.
Thank you for starting us off with a whiny, misogynist rant. Now that that's taken care of, maybe we can move on to discussing the more important topics.
You have to admit that we do tend to be a bit eccentric, at best.
I'd be curious to see what percentage of low-UID Slashdotters have been professionally diagnosed with mental illness. To be fair, it's probably not much worse than the goons at Something Awful.
the beginning of FB has already begun. Not that i'm complaining.
Greetings, my friend. We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future. You are interested in the unknown... the mysterious. The unexplainable. That is why you are here. And now, for the first time, we are bringing to you, the full story of what happened on that fateful day. We are bringing you all the evidence, based only on the secret testimony, of the miserable souls, who survived this terrifying ordeal. The incidents, the places. My friend, we cannot keep this a secret any longer. Let us punish the guilty. Let us reward the innocent. My friend, can your heart stand the shocking facts of grave robbers from outer space?
I was actually pleasantly surprised by their prices. $79 really isn't all that bad. I remember these keyboards costing more than that, back in the 1980s, and inflation means that this is actually a huge bargain. Then again, everything but the Commodore 64 was overpriced as hell, back in those days.
So what? You found a group of second wave feminists that are anti-porn, with their positions exaggerated by a sensationalist story.
It's not like that's a rare occurrence. For decades, Andrea Dworkin was dogged by the urban myth that she said "all sex is rape".
There are socially conservative feminists (first and second wave), socially liberal feminists (third wave), and lots of splinter groups that are somewhere in between. There is bitter, intense in-fighting between these groups, and there are quite a few feminists who'd agree with you that anti-porn crusaders have given feminism a bad name.
For what it's worth, the current vanguard is actually quite tolerant of porn. They generally call themselves "sex positive feminists".
Paraphrasing Madeleine Albright: "What's the point of having such a powerful military, if we never use it?"
It's there, so we use it. If it weren't there, we wouldn't be using it.
We could call it... KHTML and make it a part of KDE!
However, to be fair, KHTML is actually LGPL.
Why not charge him with reckless endangerment or criminal negligence, then?
He's not a spy or a traitor, and I don't think he should be charged as such.
EA started to suck the minute that Trip Hawkins left.
I don't think you understand how politics and police in a big city work.
There's the police force that the poor get, the police force that the middle class get, and the police force that the rich get. Generally, when cops come into poor neighborhoods, it's to bash heads. In middle class neighborhoods, you get sympathetic cops who politely explain that they're too busy to investigate your report. In the rich neighborhoods, they drop everything in order to find your missing poodle.
Even so, the guy has a point.
The Democrats are usually no better than Republicans, yet they get a free pass, because they give lip service to a few token liberal ideas.
The Librarian is nominated by the President, and our current one is over 80 years old.
Obama will probably be appointing a new Librarian of Congress, as well as several Supreme Court justices.
Hey... I voted for Jill Stein.
Of course it's biased in the way that it's stated. Many of the statements on the quiz are very strongly worded, with an extreme bias toward some political viewpoint. That's how they tell how far along the axis (left/right, authoritarian/libertarian) to put you. If you agree with the highly biased statements, you get labeled as an ideologue. If you disagree with them, you get moved back to the center.
However, I generally agree with you that Political Compass is somewhat biased toward European sensibilities. Also, the test is not a good measure of extremism. If you answer extremist left and extremist right answers positively, you get placed in the center, along with all the wishy-washy moderates.
How did you score? I'm usually in the (-7, -7) range, but recently I seem to have been radicalized and end up even more deeply into anarchist territory (-9, -9).
Do people actually believe that nonsense? Obama is left, not left center, not center, left. The majority of what he does is extremely partisan, which is why many believe he may officially be the most divisive president in history.
You're crazy. Here's an unbiased view of the 2012 American Presidential election. He's clearly an authoritarian, right-wing politician. Jill Stein was the only major left-wing candidate, and she was center-left.
You're right about the extremists and the nutjobs, who seem to be controlling the Republican party these days, but there are a lot of moderates that can be swayed over to the Republican side, given a strong enough issue. The Republicans tried their hardest to manufacture one with Benghazi, but nobody cared. Releasing dangerous terrorists back into the wild? That could really take hold.
I agree with you. He should stop compromising with nutjobs and extremists, grow a spine, and finally do something liberal. However, doing so could very well throw the 2016 election. The Democratic Party would rather hold on to power than do the right thing. That's why I vote with the Greens, even if they are nutjob hippies. Out of all the nutjobs out there, I think I probably agree with those nutjobs the most.