The downloader was already trackable. Bittorrent was never a secure protocol; that's where all those lawsuits got their targets. Knowing who paid for the original copy of the downloaded file changes nothing.
Well, in that case, we ought to be allowed to experiment on humans against their will, surely. I mean, chimps are similar to us, but they're not identical, and those dissimilarities slow down human-applicable research. if vivisecting a few hundred screaming humans can advance lifesaving medical science, why, it would be selfish not to strap them down!
I find that it's a really good idea to try to understand why people prefer the systems they do. Be sympathetic, get inside their heads, and you'll be better able to both defend your own choices and sympathize with theirs.
This part really should be obvious, but on Slashdot it's not: if you ever conclude that anyone likes any system because "they're stupid", go back and try again. For non-techies, a dirt-simple, friendly, easy-to-use system that does the tiny set of tasks they need is genuinely more useful than a powerful, complex system that they don't have the time or inclination to learn about. Not everyone derives pleasure and satisfaction from figuring out complex systems, and many people simply have other things to do with their time.
My guess is that there's several reasons: BAC below a certain threshold doesn't measurably affect your ability to drive; lots of innocuous things contain alcohol in quantities too small to ever cause intoxication; and breathalyzers are far from 100% accurate. You don't want people losing their license because they drank a glass of orange juice, or just because the breathalyzer erroneously showed 0.01% instead of 0.00%.
"Think of the Bluetooth headset: it’s a really sensible way to use your phone without having to take it out of your pocket—so sensible that there’s really no reason not to keep that headset in your ear most of the time. But you don’t, do you?"
Yes. Yes, I do. Know why? Because I'm a nerd, I'm practical, and I don't give two wet shits what you think.
What weirds me out about this excerpt (I did not RTFA) is the vague implication that if people are too image-obsessed to use a practical, advantageous product, it's the product that's defective and not the people.
The questioner asked how to deal with a problem at school, and your answer was "Finish school, then..."
You're not answering the question that was asked. You're answering a completely different question that is useless to the asker and is only intended to make you feel better about yourself, you Hard-Minded Realist, you. Thus, you're a troll.
This is true in general, but when you're having trouble with something--a coding problem, say--it can be very useful to describe it out loud. Processing things verbally makes your brain think about them differently. I'd like to have a dollar for every time I've struggled with something for three hours, gone to ask a coworker for help, and then realized the solution while I was explaining the problem to them.
Telling an ADD person that they have to get used to distractions is like telling a person in a wheelchair to quit moaning and walk already.
Why is it so hard to believe that not everyone's brain works like yours? With ADD (and some kinds of autism), a conversation on TV across the room feels like it's being shouted in your ear. It is not physically possible to ignore. It can't be fixed with practice or willpower any more than a severed spinal cord can be.
Why would I want to do that to my Android when an external pack is just as good, just as cheap, and doesn't require me to strip off my Otterbox and reboot my phone?
The actual small print: $19.99 is for the power cells. The charger that the cells and your phone plug in to doesn't even have a price listed yet, which probably means it costs hundreds. Oh, and it's also not available yet, and pre-orders are sold out.
Slashdot fact-checking fails again. Great job, guys!
If an operation takes more than 10 times what it's supposed to, that is new information. The ticking of the system clock is new information, really. When a 1-second operation takes 10 seconds, admitting that you're lost and switching the estimate to "unknown" is less inaccurate/deceptive/an outright lie than sticking with "1 second remaining" for the next five minutes.
For fuck's sake, guys, let it wait! In ten years or twenty years, once 3D printing is generally accepted in the home, then go ahead and make your little plastic hobby guns. 3D printing is an unbelievably vital technology, we need it to grow free and unfettered, and you assholes are handing the government a golden excuse on a silver platter to nip it in the bud and regulate it into uselessness because you just can't bear to wait to have shitty, worthless plastic guns.
What would file-sharing look like now if someone had found a way to, shit, I dunno, kill a 12-year-old with Napster three months after it launched? The RIAA would make that happen with a time machine if they could. Nothing turns the general public against a new technology like a solid, broad-spectrum THINK OF THE CHILDREN ad campaign. Do not let them do this.
Well, dang, Slashdot doesn't normally post good news! A scumbag gets caught and goes to prison. Justice is done, the system works, etc etc.
You hypocrites. If this article was about a EULA where someone claimed the right to publish the contents of your email without permission, Slashdot would be (rightfully) up in arms. But when some stalker-ass waste of skin actually does violate the privacy of a bunch of innocent women, suddenly privacy violation is perfectly okay as long as the victims were popular and used naive passwords.
Or else you're puking up non sequiturs about HSBC. Yeah, those fuckholes deserve to rot in prison too, and it's criminal that they won't be published. That's got nothing to do with Christopher Chaney's guilt.
"My access to global information networks from a pocket-sized computer while flying miles above the earth is so slow that I can only watch pornography in standard definition!"
Lulz. "If your head gasket is warped, instead of whining to a mechanic, why don't you forge yourself a new engine block?" Yeah, you can, and I'm glad the option is there, but coding your own drivers is absurdly impractical for the great majority of users.
Now, I'll admit that I totally want one, but are there any non-evil (or non-military, if you prefer) uses for a working invisibility cloak? All I can think of is "spying on people" and "making it easier for soldiers to kill people." Are there civilian applications?
Here in Lexington, Kentucky, I see more bikes every year. The city has been steadily adding bike lanes to every road in the downtown/university area. Local businesses are getting together to install bike hitching posts in the restaurant-and-bar districts around campus, and even Wal-Mart has started installing bike racks. Critical Mass rides happen several times a year, and there's more people every time.
Some places in the US maybe losing their bike culture, but not all of them.
Oh, we don't have a helmet law, either. I don't think there should be one. That doesn't make you any less of an idiot if you don't wear a helmet.
Oh, and they continue to be a nuisance when parked as well because most bike riders seem deadly afraid of walking which results in huge piles of seemingly discarded bicycles packed tightly around entrances to malls, stations and similar. There will be bikes parked against almost all lamp posts, traffic signs, free-standing trees and walls.
As a cyclist, I agree 100% with everything you said about unsafe riders, but this particular thing wouldn't be a problem if businesses would provide proper bicycle racks for their customers. Half the point of a bicycle is that you shouldn't have to park three blocks away from your destination. It's ridiculous that large businesses will buy up acres of land for parking lots and refuse to spend a few hundred dollars on a bike rack.
Slashdot Mirror
I would and have.
The downloader was already trackable. Bittorrent was never a secure protocol; that's where all those lawsuits got their targets. Knowing who paid for the original copy of the downloaded file changes nothing.
Well, in that case, we ought to be allowed to experiment on humans against their will, surely. I mean, chimps are similar to us, but they're not identical, and those dissimilarities slow down human-applicable research. if vivisecting a few hundred screaming humans can advance lifesaving medical science, why, it would be selfish not to strap them down!
I find that it's a really good idea to try to understand why people prefer the systems they do. Be sympathetic, get inside their heads, and you'll be better able to both defend your own choices and sympathize with theirs.
This part really should be obvious, but on Slashdot it's not: if you ever conclude that anyone likes any system because "they're stupid", go back and try again. For non-techies, a dirt-simple, friendly, easy-to-use system that does the tiny set of tasks they need is genuinely more useful than a powerful, complex system that they don't have the time or inclination to learn about. Not everyone derives pleasure and satisfaction from figuring out complex systems, and many people simply have other things to do with their time.
My guess is that there's several reasons: BAC below a certain threshold doesn't measurably affect your ability to drive; lots of innocuous things contain alcohol in quantities too small to ever cause intoxication; and breathalyzers are far from 100% accurate. You don't want people losing their license because they drank a glass of orange juice, or just because the breathalyzer erroneously showed 0.01% instead of 0.00%.
"Think of the Bluetooth headset: it’s a really sensible way to use your phone without having to take it out of your pocket—so sensible that there’s really no reason not to keep that headset in your ear most of the time. But you don’t, do you?"
Yes. Yes, I do. Know why? Because I'm a nerd, I'm practical, and I don't give two wet shits what you think.
What weirds me out about this excerpt (I did not RTFA) is the vague implication that if people are too image-obsessed to use a practical, advantageous product, it's the product that's defective and not the people.
This is gonna be like when we all scoffed about the iPad's potential market, isn't it?
You're new to this "humor" thing, aren't you?
Serious question. Can you store files and run apps locally? I don't know. If the answer is "no", then it's obviously worthless garbage.
The questioner asked how to deal with a problem at school, and your answer was "Finish school, then..."
You're not answering the question that was asked. You're answering a completely different question that is useless to the asker and is only intended to make you feel better about yourself, you Hard-Minded Realist, you. Thus, you're a troll.
This is true in general, but when you're having trouble with something--a coding problem, say--it can be very useful to describe it out loud. Processing things verbally makes your brain think about them differently. I'd like to have a dollar for every time I've struggled with something for three hours, gone to ask a coworker for help, and then realized the solution while I was explaining the problem to them.
Telling an ADD person that they have to get used to distractions is like telling a person in a wheelchair to quit moaning and walk already.
Why is it so hard to believe that not everyone's brain works like yours? With ADD (and some kinds of autism), a conversation on TV across the room feels like it's being shouted in your ear. It is not physically possible to ignore. It can't be fixed with practice or willpower any more than a severed spinal cord can be.
Did you also steal confidential documents in the process? You seem to be ignoring that little detail.
Why would I want to do that to my Android when an external pack is just as good, just as cheap, and doesn't require me to strip off my Otterbox and reboot my phone?
The actual small print: $19.99 is for the power cells. The charger that the cells and your phone plug in to doesn't even have a price listed yet, which probably means it costs hundreds. Oh, and it's also not available yet, and pre-orders are sold out.
Slashdot fact-checking fails again. Great job, guys!
If an operation takes more than 10 times what it's supposed to, that is new information. The ticking of the system clock is new information, really. When a 1-second operation takes 10 seconds, admitting that you're lost and switching the estimate to "unknown" is less inaccurate/deceptive/an outright lie than sticking with "1 second remaining" for the next five minutes.
For fuck's sake, guys, let it wait! In ten years or twenty years, once 3D printing is generally accepted in the home, then go ahead and make your little plastic hobby guns. 3D printing is an unbelievably vital technology, we need it to grow free and unfettered, and you assholes are handing the government a golden excuse on a silver platter to nip it in the bud and regulate it into uselessness because you just can't bear to wait to have shitty, worthless plastic guns.
What would file-sharing look like now if someone had found a way to, shit, I dunno, kill a 12-year-old with Napster three months after it launched? The RIAA would make that happen with a time machine if they could. Nothing turns the general public against a new technology like a solid, broad-spectrum THINK OF THE CHILDREN ad campaign. Do not let them do this.
Well, dang, Slashdot doesn't normally post good news! A scumbag gets caught and goes to prison. Justice is done, the system works, etc etc.
You hypocrites. If this article was about a EULA where someone claimed the right to publish the contents of your email without permission, Slashdot would be (rightfully) up in arms. But when some stalker-ass waste of skin actually does violate the privacy of a bunch of innocent women, suddenly privacy violation is perfectly okay as long as the victims were popular and used naive passwords.
Or else you're puking up non sequiturs about HSBC. Yeah, those fuckholes deserve to rot in prison too, and it's criminal that they won't be published. That's got nothing to do with Christopher Chaney's guilt.
"My access to global information networks from a pocket-sized computer while flying miles above the earth is so slow that I can only watch pornography in standard definition!"
A fascinating attempt at re-engaging a failed troll. Really, though, it's time to move on and try again. They can't all be golden, y'know.
Lulz. "If your head gasket is warped, instead of whining to a mechanic, why don't you forge yourself a new engine block?" Yeah, you can, and I'm glad the option is there, but coding your own drivers is absurdly impractical for the great majority of users.
Now, I'll admit that I totally want one, but are there any non-evil (or non-military, if you prefer) uses for a working invisibility cloak? All I can think of is "spying on people" and "making it easier for soldiers to kill people." Are there civilian applications?
Do that many people give a shit or have feelings for strangers they happen across / first meetings?
Yes.
There's something oddly appropriate about this question being seriously asked on Slashdot.
Here in Lexington, Kentucky, I see more bikes every year. The city has been steadily adding bike lanes to every road in the downtown/university area. Local businesses are getting together to install bike hitching posts in the restaurant-and-bar districts around campus, and even Wal-Mart has started installing bike racks. Critical Mass rides happen several times a year, and there's more people every time.
Some places in the US maybe losing their bike culture, but not all of them.
Oh, we don't have a helmet law, either. I don't think there should be one. That doesn't make you any less of an idiot if you don't wear a helmet.
Oh, and they continue to be a nuisance when parked as well because most bike riders seem deadly afraid of walking which results in huge piles of seemingly discarded bicycles packed tightly around entrances to malls, stations and similar. There will be bikes parked against almost all lamp posts, traffic signs, free-standing trees and walls.
As a cyclist, I agree 100% with everything you said about unsafe riders, but this particular thing wouldn't be a problem if businesses would provide proper bicycle racks for their customers. Half the point of a bicycle is that you shouldn't have to park three blocks away from your destination. It's ridiculous that large businesses will buy up acres of land for parking lots and refuse to spend a few hundred dollars on a bike rack.