I think that us westerners still have the idea of the Great Chain of Being. This was an organization structure developed in the medieval times of all things and life on Earth, plus angels and finally God, arranged hierarchically. Rocks are at the bottom, then come plants, insects, fish, four-legged animals, then human beings, and angels and God at the top. Each succession is 'better'. But in the modern, truly scientific view, we are just as evolved as any bacterium or jellyfish alive today. There is no hierarchy or 'better' in evolution; just genomes that have survived and reproduced.
"sometimes its best to put the rhetoric away and join the adult world, especially when it comes to earning money."
Your adult world sounds somewhat naive to me.
My time is valuable. If someone has a bad track record, I will wait for other people to try out their stuff, and let word get back to me, before I waste my time on someone who has burned me in the past. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
" The slave holder gets all tools and income from slaves.
Huh? This says nothing; you're just trying to draw an unjustifiable link between MS and slavery."
Quite the contrary. Rather than saying nothing, this statement accurate describes an unfair economic exchange. With chattel slavery, like the system we had in the US, the slave cannot re-negotiate the terms of his ownership, nor can he seek a new master. Similarly, a monopoly is an unfair economic exchange, where choice is curtailed or severely limited.
"If the general population of Japan is prohibited from carrying firearms, then why do the police have them? ...
I'll go one step further. In Japan you can only be assured that the LAW ABIDING folks aren't carrying guns."
You are claiming that there are no law-abiding police in Japan?
"Thereby, you enjoy the illusion of safety."
Do Japanese citizens live in an illusion of safety, thinking they are safe, or do the statistics show that in reality, they are actually less likely to be harmed or killed by firearms?
Similarly, do those who carry firearms for personal protection live in an illusion of safety, where they are actually more likely to be violently injured or killed on account of their firearms, because of accident, mental illness such as depression, or conflict-escalation?
I think this is a conflagration of issues. People who are using the USB hook-ups are using it to plug their turntables into their digital recording set up. It's the easy way to get the turntable to communicate with the rest of your equipment.
There is also a product, I forget the name, that is a turntable you can use to scratch and do other vinyl-type manipulations with sound samples. The vinyl record that you use just has timecodes on it, so you hook it up to your computer system and it will manipulate the input sound from another source as you manipulate the time-coded record. IIRC, it uses a USB interface.
The network itself is a fascinating example, but I wonder if it's relevant to the topic at hand? Maybe the network is protected by the fact that it is so public in nature. Because it is publically wide open to so many people, nobody in particular is gonna take the hit if it is abused in such a manner (they can say they are like a common carrier in certain respects), and since it is so public, nobody would abuse it like that because there is more of a chance of getting caught.
However, in the case of an individual with an open network, somebody can abuse it, and it still looks like the personal usage of the owner, and there is little chance that the owner is even aware that the abuse is taking place. "It's an open network, officer, I swear I had no idea what was going on!" That's probably the first excuse a lot of investigators hear. "Somebody must of hacked my computer and placed those files there! Anybody could have done it. I have no idea where they came from!"
I've heard a lot of horror stories about BBS operators, ones running legal adult porn trading BBSes, getting busted for stuff that was traded on their boards which they claimed they had no idea about. These could be just rumors, but in the early days of computer crime and computer law, this may not have mattered.
"I can guarantee you that maintenance of such machines over 30 years has cost more than $10,000. If for no other reason than the real estate that they occupy"
Yeah, but people don't run their homes like businesses. They don't maximize the profitability of every square inch. If you didn't have an old computer there, you would be spending $10,000 to house a lamp, a box of old papers, or absolutely nothing. It's a sunk cost.
Unless you keep the machine running 24/7, then you have to factor in the electricity. Same with a lamp, though. But I doubt that people keep old machines running all the time.
"Just ask Howard Dean how much influence the "left-wing blogosphere" wields in terms of getting their darling elected"
The answer would be, "Way, way more than any other election in the history of the US." Expect to see the blogosphere having increasing influence in future elections.
The problem is that people in this neighborhood watch night after night as drug and prostitution deals go down on under a bright street light on a busy corner. Any time the police are called in and they blow it by making a big show of things, people lose faith in the police, thinking they are incompetent boobs who really don't care about crime. Then, they watch the same drug and prostitution deals go down the next night....
This might sound naive, but don't the cameras also photograph the light to show that it was red at the time? Or do they just photograph the plate, assuming the light was red?
I would be more comfortable if the photo showed a car actually running a red light, photoshoping notwithstanding.
What about a situation where a cop has to tail a suspect or catch up with him without alerting him to his presence? Clicking on the siren would blow his cover. I live in a somewhat rough neighborhood and I don't like giving up the element of surprise. I've seen cops roll up on a situation and all parties involve freeze. I've heard cops coming from blocks away, siren blaring and lights brazing, and somehow when they arrive on the scene, nobody is there.
This might sound a little strange, but you probably were raised by people who were more or less mentally healthy.
I used to think that childhood issues were bullshit, until I started dealing with my own issues and seeking professional mental health. On my own, I really started learning about social rules, personality types, and mental illness. Mental illnesses have a way of propagating themselves -- not all of them, but certain ones can, and thus do. (I'm not certain that this idea is accepted by mainstream mental health professionals). It's like the way a woman who was abused by her father gets in abusive relationships with guys, and then have children who are abused by their father ( even witnessing your dad being abused by your mom is a kind of abuse ). Or a guy whose father left early leaves his wife/girlfriend when she pops out a kid. He's never experienced a father interacting with a child, so he has no idea how to do it, the whole situation is weird and scary, he can't handle it, so he splits. You grow up thinking certain types of behavior are normal and acceptable, at a subconscious level. You have no awareness of this.
Anyways, that's kind of an extreme example. If your dad chewed you out all the time, and was an unfair, uncaring tyrant, you have no problem with a boss who acts this way, because that's the way that a man acts. If he didn't, you might think something was wrong, or a little weird about him. Hey, maybe he's gay or metro? Who knows? Whatever, he really doesn't know how to handle his employees, because he doesn't crack the whip...
My guess is that you've turned down jobs where you didn't like the people or thought that things were run a little weird? That's the healthy upbringing you were given telling you that what you were observing were unhealthy interpersonal relationships. You never see the fighting, the abuse, but there were plenty of body-language and personal-interaction clues that that's how things were run at that place.
Maybe, as the company grew, he took on more workers who may or may not have been as high caliber as you. As the organization got larger, he couldn't see what was happening from an 'on the ground' perspective, and felt distant and alienated from his own company. He knew that things were happening, but now it was less under his control and influence. If something bad was going on, he knew it must be something with the new people, but he had no idea who or why or how to fix or even influence the situation positively. As a defense mechanism against unknown new employees who weren't helping the company, he turned to traditional management styles.
As organizations get bigger, there's less efficiency and people have less ability to make a positive impact. It used to be a team, with group spirit and an ability to get things done with efficiency; now it was just a machine and he no longer fully understood how it worked. But the problem had to be somewhere with the new employees. So he dealt with the situation with the only tools he had available -- managing and being a jerk, protecting himself from 'problem' employees.
Well, the more anthrax mailings you do, the larger an evidence trail you leave. I guess the anthrax mailers had reached their intended risk/payoff ratio, i.e. they thought they had done enough, and didn't see the need to risk any more mailings.
I was into dinosaurs as a child and a teenager. IIRC, this was a theory with some scientific evidence as early as the 80s.
In fact, Ornithiscia one of the latin names to describe a certain dinosaur lineage translates as "bird hips" -- but in fact birds descended from the , or Saurischia, or "lizard hip" dinosaurs. Weird. I couldn't figure out from my cursory look into wikipedia when the theory first arose.
Do you remember the anthrax that was mailed to certain senators and news anchors? I wonder where the investigation is at this point. After six years, they should be close to solving this, right?
"Related to your question, what about states like Texas where you're allowed to use deadly force to defend yourself / family if you catch an intruder in your home?"
If the law really is as you say, that you are allowed to use deadly force to *defend* yourself from an intruder, then I would guess that you would have to show that you were reasonably threatened. If there were law enforcement officials just snooping around in your house, not threatening you, then you were not defending yourself if you harm them.
Slashdot Mirror
I forgot the obligatory wikipedia link: The Great Chain of Being.
I think that us westerners still have the idea of the Great Chain of Being. This was an organization structure developed in the medieval times of all things and life on Earth, plus angels and finally God, arranged hierarchically. Rocks are at the bottom, then come plants, insects, fish, four-legged animals, then human beings, and angels and God at the top. Each succession is 'better'. But in the modern, truly scientific view, we are just as evolved as any bacterium or jellyfish alive today. There is no hierarchy or 'better' in evolution; just genomes that have survived and reproduced.
"sometimes its best to put the rhetoric away and join the adult world, especially when it comes to earning money."
Your adult world sounds somewhat naive to me.
My time is valuable. If someone has a bad track record, I will wait for other people to try out their stuff, and let word get back to me, before I waste my time on someone who has burned me in the past. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
" The slave holder gets all tools and income from slaves.
Huh? This says nothing; you're just trying to draw an unjustifiable link between MS and slavery."
Quite the contrary. Rather than saying nothing, this statement accurate describes an unfair economic exchange. With chattel slavery, like the system we had in the US, the slave cannot re-negotiate the terms of his ownership, nor can he seek a new master. Similarly, a monopoly is an unfair economic exchange, where choice is curtailed or severely limited.
"If the general population of Japan is prohibited from carrying firearms, then why do the police have them?
...
I'll go one step further. In Japan you can only be assured that the LAW ABIDING folks aren't carrying guns."
You are claiming that there are no law-abiding police in Japan?
"Thereby, you enjoy the illusion of safety."
Do Japanese citizens live in an illusion of safety, thinking they are safe, or do the statistics show that in reality, they are actually less likely to be harmed or killed by firearms?
Similarly, do those who carry firearms for personal protection live in an illusion of safety, where they are actually more likely to be violently injured or killed on account of their firearms, because of accident, mental illness such as depression, or conflict-escalation?
I think this is a conflagration of issues. People who are using the USB hook-ups are using it to plug their turntables into their digital recording set up. It's the easy way to get the turntable to communicate with the rest of your equipment.
There is also a product, I forget the name, that is a turntable you can use to scratch and do other vinyl-type manipulations with sound samples. The vinyl record that you use just has timecodes on it, so you hook it up to your computer system and it will manipulate the input sound from another source as you manipulate the time-coded record. IIRC, it uses a USB interface.
I think it's used by musicians who want to import mixing, beat-matching, or scratching into their digital recording set-up.
"It's the asshats that would take the data without your permission and or use that information for in an unethical manner"
Thus the "annoyance" or "extreme invasion of privacy and civil liberties" part of "annoying" technology.
How about a free RFID chip implanted in your hand?
</sarcasm>
The network itself is a fascinating example, but I wonder if it's relevant to the topic at hand? Maybe the network is protected by the fact that it is so public in nature. Because it is publically wide open to so many people, nobody in particular is gonna take the hit if it is abused in such a manner (they can say they are like a common carrier in certain respects), and since it is so public, nobody would abuse it like that because there is more of a chance of getting caught.
However, in the case of an individual with an open network, somebody can abuse it, and it still looks like the personal usage of the owner, and there is little chance that the owner is even aware that the abuse is taking place. "It's an open network, officer, I swear I had no idea what was going on!" That's probably the first excuse a lot of investigators hear. "Somebody must of hacked my computer and placed those files there! Anybody could have done it. I have no idea where they came from!"
I've heard a lot of horror stories about BBS operators, ones running legal adult porn trading BBSes, getting busted for stuff that was traded on their boards which they claimed they had no idea about. These could be just rumors, but in the early days of computer crime and computer law, this may not have mattered.
"I can guarantee you that maintenance of such machines over 30 years has cost more than $10,000. If for no other reason than the real estate that they occupy"
Yeah, but people don't run their homes like businesses. They don't maximize the profitability of every square inch. If you didn't have an old computer there, you would be spending $10,000 to house a lamp, a box of old papers, or absolutely nothing. It's a sunk cost.
Unless you keep the machine running 24/7, then you have to factor in the electricity. Same with a lamp, though. But I doubt that people keep old machines running all the time.
"When are these guys going to adopt a really cool logo, like a cross with bent arms or a bundle of sticks wrapped around an axe?"
How about an impersonal, all-seeing eye on top of a pyramid of money and lawyers, watching everything you do on the computer?
"Just ask Howard Dean how much influence the "left-wing blogosphere" wields in terms of getting their darling elected"
The answer would be, "Way, way more than any other election in the history of the US." Expect to see the blogosphere having increasing influence in future elections.
The problem is that people in this neighborhood watch night after night as drug and prostitution deals go down on under a bright street light on a busy corner. Any time the police are called in and they blow it by making a big show of things, people lose faith in the police, thinking they are incompetent boobs who really don't care about crime. Then, they watch the same drug and prostitution deals go down the next night....
Hey, if you have solar panels on your roof, how often to you have to wash them? Do they develop a film that reduces their efficiency?
Tough call. A lot of shit goes down around here.
This might sound naive, but don't the cameras also photograph the light to show that it was red at the time? Or do they just photograph the plate, assuming the light was red?
I would be more comfortable if the photo showed a car actually running a red light, photoshoping notwithstanding.
What about a situation where a cop has to tail a suspect or catch up with him without alerting him to his presence? Clicking on the siren would blow his cover. I live in a somewhat rough neighborhood and I don't like giving up the element of surprise. I've seen cops roll up on a situation and all parties involve freeze. I've heard cops coming from blocks away, siren blaring and lights brazing, and somehow when they arrive on the scene, nobody is there.
This might sound a little strange, but you probably were raised by people who were more or less mentally healthy.
I used to think that childhood issues were bullshit, until I started dealing with my own issues and seeking professional mental health. On my own, I really started learning about social rules, personality types, and mental illness. Mental illnesses have a way of propagating themselves -- not all of them, but certain ones can, and thus do. (I'm not certain that this idea is accepted by mainstream mental health professionals). It's like the way a woman who was abused by her father gets in abusive relationships with guys, and then have children who are abused by their father ( even witnessing your dad being abused by your mom is a kind of abuse ). Or a guy whose father left early leaves his wife/girlfriend when she pops out a kid. He's never experienced a father interacting with a child, so he has no idea how to do it, the whole situation is weird and scary, he can't handle it, so he splits. You grow up thinking certain types of behavior are normal and acceptable, at a subconscious level. You have no awareness of this.
Anyways, that's kind of an extreme example. If your dad chewed you out all the time, and was an unfair, uncaring tyrant, you have no problem with a boss who acts this way, because that's the way that a man acts. If he didn't, you might think something was wrong, or a little weird about him. Hey, maybe he's gay or metro? Who knows? Whatever, he really doesn't know how to handle his employees, because he doesn't crack the whip...
My guess is that you've turned down jobs where you didn't like the people or thought that things were run a little weird? That's the healthy upbringing you were given telling you that what you were observing were unhealthy interpersonal relationships. You never see the fighting, the abuse, but there were plenty of body-language and personal-interaction clues that that's how things were run at that place.
Maybe, as the company grew, he took on more workers who may or may not have been as high caliber as you. As the organization got larger, he couldn't see what was happening from an 'on the ground' perspective, and felt distant and alienated from his own company. He knew that things were happening, but now it was less under his control and influence. If something bad was going on, he knew it must be something with the new people, but he had no idea who or why or how to fix or even influence the situation positively. As a defense mechanism against unknown new employees who weren't helping the company, he turned to traditional management styles.
As organizations get bigger, there's less efficiency and people have less ability to make a positive impact. It used to be a team, with group spirit and an ability to get things done with efficiency; now it was just a machine and he no longer fully understood how it worked. But the problem had to be somewhere with the new employees. So he dealt with the situation with the only tools he had available -- managing and being a jerk, protecting himself from 'problem' employees.
Just a thought.
"... They were even able to tell that one of the dinosaurs studied was a brooding female. "
;)
Heh. Too bad they didn't have prozac back then
Well, the more anthrax mailings you do, the larger an evidence trail you leave. I guess the anthrax mailers had reached their intended risk/payoff ratio, i.e. they thought they had done enough, and didn't see the need to risk any more mailings.
I was into dinosaurs as a child and a teenager. IIRC, this was a theory with some scientific evidence as early as the 80s.
In fact, Ornithiscia one of the latin names to describe a certain dinosaur lineage translates as "bird hips" -- but in fact birds descended from the , or Saurischia, or "lizard hip" dinosaurs. Weird. I couldn't figure out from my cursory look into wikipedia when the theory first arose.
Do you remember the anthrax that was mailed to certain senators and news anchors? I wonder where the investigation is at this point. After six years, they should be close to solving this, right?
"Related to your question, what about states like Texas where you're allowed to use deadly force to defend yourself / family if you catch an intruder in your home?"
If the law really is as you say, that you are allowed to use deadly force to *defend* yourself from an intruder, then I would guess that you would have to show that you were reasonably threatened. If there were law enforcement officials just snooping around in your house, not threatening you, then you were not defending yourself if you harm them.