I don't want Christmas or my birthday or any other day to fall on the same day of the week forever!
All the benefits these guys claim are about productivity or efficiency or financial savings. Those are not the most important things in life. I wonder, do these guys eat the same thing on the same day of the week, and take their vacations in the same place every year?
These guys aren't being realistic. Y2K was bad enough--imagine reprogramming all the software in the world to use a completely new calendar! There'd be a whole new industry for temporary date-conversion software, because people would have to convert between them until the whole world was adjusted. Not to mention, how do you get the entire world to agree on ANYTHING nowadays? There is no authority with the power and influence the pope once had, and with globalization, a change in one place can't just trickle down eventually, or spread with colonization.
And they want everyone to use UTC too. Thanks, but I don't want to advance to the next day at effectively 8 pm.
These guys are out of touch with the real people in the real world. Life isn't all about numbers.
Wow, sounds like your boss was...uh... not too bright. Or do you think he was getting some kind of kickback? Why would he spend extra money for the same work? He could have made himself look better by saving money.
The problem is that all these conclusions are inferences. Without time machines, we can't verify that the inferences and models upon which they're based are truly accurate. In a few hundred years we can dig up some cores and compare the inferences with recorded data. Until then, one should not take such inferences as fact--to do so is not science but dishonest.
There are some places in which the population currently exceeds its carrying capacity. It's foolish to extrapolate that to the entire planet.
The problem is not having enough food--there is more than enough food on Earth to feed every person on the planet. The problem is distribution--and economics, politics, etc. The problem is getting the food to the people who need it.
The real problem is corruption and greed and just plain evil in governments, and in some places, in the society and culture as well. The real problem is people who don't work together as a community or a nation but instead play "every man for himself", seeking not the common good but to gratify oneself.
We don't need less people--we need fewer evil people. We need more good people.
Your suggesting that we need a global population reduction is a dehumanizing proposition, devaluing the lives of billions of real human beings. It is people like you who are the problem, people wanting to selfishly "cut off the dead weight" for the sake of themselves--people who think they are more important than everyone else. Shame on you.
What did you mean when you said, "Oh, did we suddenly forget about Jane Goodall's work?" I'm no expert on her or Koko, but as far as I can tell from a quick googling, she did not work with Koko. So when I pointed that out about chimps, I was pointing out that your mentioning Goodall's work doesn't seem to help your argument, because it seems that she's famous for working with chimps, which, as you said, aren't so smart.
I also asked for clarification about Koko, but you haven't provided any.
I'm still waiting for you to flesh out your argument. I think I invalidated yours, not mine.
Well, since they don't care about users--or usefulness--but only about "technology," perhaps that explains the lack of basic features, like the inability to resume downloads. Perhaps it also explains some of the "over-engineering" going into such basic features. *sigh*
The SafeBrowsing stuff does keep SQLite files, but the one I see in my Chrome profile is only 5.1 MB. My Firefox urlclassifier3.sqlite file is 44 MB. My Chrome's "History" file is 151 MB. I'm on Linux.
I don't trust Google completely, but I'd be very surprised if Chrome were snooping on files all around the system. In fact, I just used strace to record every file accessed by Chrome during a quick session in which I launched it and shut it down, and the only files it accessed that weren't strictly related to the Chrome profile or the desktop environment were files that I downloaded with Chrome in the past--and those were only stat accesses, to see if the files still existed. The total size of all files accessed in my home directory was 378 MB, and the entire ~/.config/google-chrome directory is 522 MB. This is Chrome 16.0.912.63-r113337 on Kubuntu Natty.
In this case I think your paranoia is misplaced. Chrome is probably the safest contemporary web browser one can use.
I have also been shocked at Chrome's disk activity at startup--it just doesn't make sense. But you're telling me that Chromium doesn't do the same thing? I find it hard to believe that all the disk thrashing comes from Google-specific code that's only in Chrome. Surely it's related to messing with things like the history files (which are saved indefinitely and rewritten into separate files), indexes, cache, and other SQLite databases, which are in both...right? If Chromium really is so much better about this than Chrome, great--but it seems unlikely to me.
I assume you meant Koko. And you'll have to explain what moral decision of Koko's you're referring to.
I don't think Goodall's that good of a reference for you. Here's a quick example:
But perhaps more startling, and disturbing, was the tendency for aggression and violence within chimpanzee troops. Goodall observed dominant females deliberately killing the young of other females in the troop in order to maintain their dominance, sometimes going as far as cannibalism.
Yeah, great moral decisions by those chimps. Do you really want to claim that you're only as good as an animal?
Since you still don't seem to get it, I'll put it yet another way: Call me when an animal can make a moral decision based on moral principles rather than what's in front of its face, e.g. one of those chimps restraining its murderous instincts because it's wrong to kill. Animals do not reason. Some do exhibit primitive emotions--that's not the same thing.
But, hey, if you say that you are no better than a chimp or a gorilla, who am I to argue with you? Speak for yourself, though.
If a woman chooses to pursue a relationship with someone who is abusive or demonstrates abusive tendencies, and is later abused by him, he is guilty of abuse--but she made a poor decision. If she hadn't gotten involved with the guy, would he have randomly chosen her out of the phonebook to go to her house and beat her?
If someone goes out on the ocean in a rubber raft when a storm is on the horizon, would you say they did nothing unwise? They could see it coming--they didn't use good judgment. If someone gives all their money to a con man who says he's got a great investment, but doesn't have any proof or credentials, would you say they did nothing unwise? They made a dumb decision.
"These women" who continue to date abusive men need to use their capacity for thinking and exercising judgment to avoid such people. Maybe they do FEEL attracted to them--so what? They should THINK that they're a bad choice and stay away from them. They should CHOOSE to date someone more stable and self-controlled, and then if they invest in a relationship with such a man, they will DEVELOP FEELINGS for him.
People are not animals. Anyone who says people can't or shouldn't resist their urges and impulses and feelings of attraction degrades the human race. We have brains--use them!
That's not the same as humans' ability to think and create. It's memory. If their impulse is hunger, it's not impulse control to use memory to get more food to fulfill the hunger--it's satisfying the impulse.
Well, yours was the dumbest I've heard all day. It's precisely true: our ability to think and decide and resist natural urges is one of the things which makes us human--as opposed to animals.
You can define "animal" however you want--I do not include human beings in the definition. Life on earth fits into about 4 basic categories: plants, animals, single-celled organisms, and humans, aka people.
If you're one of those who thinks that animals are as important and valuable as people (or more so), then we probably don't have much common ground.
A naval ship of a sovereign nation has the right to defend itself from defacement. They weren't bullying anyone at all. Their method was harmless and happened to be hilarious. It illustrates the absurdity and stupidity of the protester: regardless of the validity of his protest, his methodology was silly, and he should have seen it coming. And he's lucky lethal force wasn't used, because after previous attacks on naval ships by small boats with bombs, it wouldn't be necessarily unjustified.
I don't think showing how stupid the protester was helps the protester's case.
Why would they? It's common knowledge. Anyone who hasn't seen or experienced one of these Wikiwars hasn't looked into them. Five minutes on Wikipedia or Google will tell you more than you wanted to know.
References to URLs often rot. Your national newspaper article or local TV station article will likely not be accessible at the same URL in 2-3 years because of the constant CMS churn.
Then what? It gets deleted for no references? Unverifiable information? Or does the valid-but-no-longer-referenced data get cut?
Wikipedia is a farce. Sometimes it's a handy farce, but I'll never donate a nickel nor a minute of my own until they fix their fundamental problems (which requires top-down change; IOW it will never happen).
Chrome is good but in some ways still a joke. e.g. It still doesn't support resuming downloads. That's right. And the devs just make excuses, while they make important stuff work--you know, stuff like WebGL, or YetAnotherJavaScriptEngine, or ruining the preferences dialogs. They have their priorities messed up.
For years I have browsed with Funny set to -1 so they won't score higher than 4 and Interesting/Informative 5s will be higher.
But yes, I do think/. has gone downhill over the years. Almost makes me wonder if we should start a Slashold or Oldslash site and repost stories that had truly interesting discussions, kind of like "mining the old gold."
Wasn't this once solved, years ago, by the original meta-moderation? I remember being asked to determine whether a moderation was accurate by reading the comment in question and answering whether the moderation in question was fair or unfair. That was unlike today, where I'm just asked to moderate the comment again, with the full range of moderation choices. The former is a control on moderators, while the latter just remoderates comments.
With the old system, a sockpuppet that was used to unfairly moderate comments would eventually be meta-modded and lose its moderator points.
Why was the old system abandoned? Am I missing something?
With all the talking, and thinking, and sentience, and morality...
Technology isn't the problem. The problem is people who think "Nature" is superior to and more important than humans. The moment we started valuing and prioritizing animals and plants over people, we started to undermine society at a fundamental level.
This dehumanizing of humanity leads us down evil paths, and it makes it easier for the selfish and greedy to climb up on top of the good people--after all, they're just animals with tools.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't want Christmas or my birthday or any other day to fall on the same day of the week forever!
All the benefits these guys claim are about productivity or efficiency or financial savings. Those are not the most important things in life. I wonder, do these guys eat the same thing on the same day of the week, and take their vacations in the same place every year?
These guys aren't being realistic. Y2K was bad enough--imagine reprogramming all the software in the world to use a completely new calendar! There'd be a whole new industry for temporary date-conversion software, because people would have to convert between them until the whole world was adjusted. Not to mention, how do you get the entire world to agree on ANYTHING nowadays? There is no authority with the power and influence the pope once had, and with globalization, a change in one place can't just trickle down eventually, or spread with colonization.
And they want everyone to use UTC too. Thanks, but I don't want to advance to the next day at effectively 8 pm.
These guys are out of touch with the real people in the real world. Life isn't all about numbers.
Wow, sounds like your boss was ...uh... not too bright. Or do you think he was getting some kind of kickback? Why would he spend extra money for the same work? He could have made himself look better by saving money.
The problem is that all these conclusions are inferences. Without time machines, we can't verify that the inferences and models upon which they're based are truly accurate. In a few hundred years we can dig up some cores and compare the inferences with recorded data. Until then, one should not take such inferences as fact--to do so is not science but dishonest.
There are some places in which the population currently exceeds its carrying capacity. It's foolish to extrapolate that to the entire planet.
The problem is not having enough food--there is more than enough food on Earth to feed every person on the planet. The problem is distribution--and economics, politics, etc. The problem is getting the food to the people who need it.
The real problem is corruption and greed and just plain evil in governments, and in some places, in the society and culture as well. The real problem is people who don't work together as a community or a nation but instead play "every man for himself", seeking not the common good but to gratify oneself.
We don't need less people--we need fewer evil people. We need more good people.
Your suggesting that we need a global population reduction is a dehumanizing proposition, devaluing the lives of billions of real human beings. It is people like you who are the problem, people wanting to selfishly "cut off the dead weight" for the sake of themselves--people who think they are more important than everyone else. Shame on you.
What did you mean when you said, "Oh, did we suddenly forget about Jane Goodall's work?" I'm no expert on her or Koko, but as far as I can tell from a quick googling, she did not work with Koko. So when I pointed that out about chimps, I was pointing out that your mentioning Goodall's work doesn't seem to help your argument, because it seems that she's famous for working with chimps, which, as you said, aren't so smart.
I also asked for clarification about Koko, but you haven't provided any.
I'm still waiting for you to flesh out your argument. I think I invalidated yours, not mine.
Well, since they don't care about users--or usefulness--but only about "technology," perhaps that explains the lack of basic features, like the inability to resume downloads. Perhaps it also explains some of the "over-engineering" going into such basic features. *sigh*
Central server? What happens when it goes down for some reason?
The SafeBrowsing stuff does keep SQLite files, but the one I see in my Chrome profile is only 5.1 MB. My Firefox urlclassifier3.sqlite file is 44 MB. My Chrome's "History" file is 151 MB. I'm on Linux.
I don't trust Google completely, but I'd be very surprised if Chrome were snooping on files all around the system. In fact, I just used strace to record every file accessed by Chrome during a quick session in which I launched it and shut it down, and the only files it accessed that weren't strictly related to the Chrome profile or the desktop environment were files that I downloaded with Chrome in the past--and those were only stat accesses, to see if the files still existed. The total size of all files accessed in my home directory was 378 MB, and the entire ~/.config/google-chrome directory is 522 MB. This is Chrome 16.0.912.63-r113337 on Kubuntu Natty.
In this case I think your paranoia is misplaced. Chrome is probably the safest contemporary web browser one can use.
I have also been shocked at Chrome's disk activity at startup--it just doesn't make sense. But you're telling me that Chromium doesn't do the same thing? I find it hard to believe that all the disk thrashing comes from Google-specific code that's only in Chrome. Surely it's related to messing with things like the history files (which are saved indefinitely and rewritten into separate files), indexes, cache, and other SQLite databases, which are in both...right? If Chromium really is so much better about this than Chrome, great--but it seems unlikely to me.
I assume you meant Koko. And you'll have to explain what moral decision of Koko's you're referring to.
I don't think Goodall's that good of a reference for you. Here's a quick example:
But perhaps more startling, and disturbing, was the tendency for aggression and violence within chimpanzee troops. Goodall observed dominant females deliberately killing the young of other females in the troop in order to maintain their dominance, sometimes going as far as cannibalism.
Yeah, great moral decisions by those chimps. Do you really want to claim that you're only as good as an animal?
Since you still don't seem to get it, I'll put it yet another way: Call me when an animal can make a moral decision based on moral principles rather than what's in front of its face, e.g. one of those chimps restraining its murderous instincts because it's wrong to kill. Animals do not reason. Some do exhibit primitive emotions--that's not the same thing.
But, hey, if you say that you are no better than a chimp or a gorilla, who am I to argue with you? Speak for yourself, though.
Call me when an animal can make a moral decision.
Your unwillingness to recognize that people are more valuable than animals is dehumanizing. Human life is not equal to animal life.
No, you missed my point. I'm talking about people who think it's more important to be nice to the poor, innocent animals than to take care of people.
You don't get it.
If a woman chooses to pursue a relationship with someone who is abusive or demonstrates abusive tendencies, and is later abused by him, he is guilty of abuse--but she made a poor decision. If she hadn't gotten involved with the guy, would he have randomly chosen her out of the phonebook to go to her house and beat her?
If someone goes out on the ocean in a rubber raft when a storm is on the horizon, would you say they did nothing unwise? They could see it coming--they didn't use good judgment. If someone gives all their money to a con man who says he's got a great investment, but doesn't have any proof or credentials, would you say they did nothing unwise? They made a dumb decision.
"These women" who continue to date abusive men need to use their capacity for thinking and exercising judgment to avoid such people. Maybe they do FEEL attracted to them--so what? They should THINK that they're a bad choice and stay away from them. They should CHOOSE to date someone more stable and self-controlled, and then if they invest in a relationship with such a man, they will DEVELOP FEELINGS for him.
People are not animals. Anyone who says people can't or shouldn't resist their urges and impulses and feelings of attraction degrades the human race. We have brains--use them!
That's not the same as humans' ability to think and create. It's memory. If their impulse is hunger, it's not impulse control to use memory to get more food to fulfill the hunger--it's satisfying the impulse.
Call me when dogs train themselves to not do those things.
These people you speak of choose to not exercise self-control. They are able.
Well, yours was the dumbest I've heard all day. It's precisely true: our ability to think and decide and resist natural urges is one of the things which makes us human--as opposed to animals.
You can define "animal" however you want--I do not include human beings in the definition. Life on earth fits into about 4 basic categories: plants, animals, single-celled organisms, and humans, aka people.
If you're one of those who thinks that animals are as important and valuable as people (or more so), then we probably don't have much common ground.
What kind of Christianity are you talking about? It doesn't sound like you know the Bible very well. (Don't equate Catholicism with Christianity.)
Haha, are you the guy who was in the raft?
A naval ship of a sovereign nation has the right to defend itself from defacement. They weren't bullying anyone at all. Their method was harmless and happened to be hilarious. It illustrates the absurdity and stupidity of the protester: regardless of the validity of his protest, his methodology was silly, and he should have seen it coming. And he's lucky lethal force wasn't used, because after previous attacks on naval ships by small boats with bombs, it wouldn't be necessarily unjustified.
I don't think showing how stupid the protester was helps the protester's case.
Why would they? It's common knowledge. Anyone who hasn't seen or experienced one of these Wikiwars hasn't looked into them. Five minutes on Wikipedia or Google will tell you more than you wanted to know.
References to URLs often rot. Your national newspaper article or local TV station article will likely not be accessible at the same URL in 2-3 years because of the constant CMS churn.
Then what? It gets deleted for no references? Unverifiable information? Or does the valid-but-no-longer-referenced data get cut?
Wikipedia is a farce. Sometimes it's a handy farce, but I'll never donate a nickel nor a minute of my own until they fix their fundamental problems (which requires top-down change; IOW it will never happen).
Chrome is good but in some ways still a joke. e.g. It still doesn't support resuming downloads. That's right. And the devs just make excuses, while they make important stuff work--you know, stuff like WebGL, or YetAnotherJavaScriptEngine, or ruining the preferences dialogs. They have their priorities messed up.
For years I have browsed with Funny set to -1 so they won't score higher than 4 and Interesting/Informative 5s will be higher.
But yes, I do think /. has gone downhill over the years. Almost makes me wonder if we should start a Slashold or Oldslash site and repost stories that had truly interesting discussions, kind of like "mining the old gold."
Wasn't this once solved, years ago, by the original meta-moderation? I remember being asked to determine whether a moderation was accurate by reading the comment in question and answering whether the moderation in question was fair or unfair. That was unlike today, where I'm just asked to moderate the comment again, with the full range of moderation choices. The former is a control on moderators, while the latter just remoderates comments.
With the old system, a sockpuppet that was used to unfairly moderate comments would eventually be meta-modded and lose its moderator points.
Why was the old system abandoned? Am I missing something?
"In fact, we had a meeting the other day to discuss whether or not office phones were necessary anymore."
Of course they are! You could have had that meeting from your own office via conference call!
With all the talking, and thinking, and sentience, and morality...
Technology isn't the problem. The problem is people who think "Nature" is superior to and more important than humans. The moment we started valuing and prioritizing animals and plants over people, we started to undermine society at a fundamental level.
This dehumanizing of humanity leads us down evil paths, and it makes it easier for the selfish and greedy to climb up on top of the good people--after all, they're just animals with tools.