+5 well earned. I would like to add that a lack of economic suffrage affects political suffrage. Maybe someone below the poverty line would like to vote, but because money is so tight they have two (or three!) jobs and can't get the time off to go to the polls. This is especially made harder in some states by encroaching voter laws and cutting down the number of early voting days, locations, or both.
I enlisted in late 2009, right before the Army significantly raised the enlistment requirements, and before going in for the pre-enlistment stuff (urinalysis, medical check, etc.) my recruiter had myself and others going to enlist fill out a yes/no questionnaire. After that they took us into the office, closed the door, and told us that if we didn't answer "No" to every one of those questions (which included prior drug use) we would be turned away from the military.[1] So I was a good little lemming, did so, and went to Basic four months later.[2] While I never thought to poll my fellow enlisted, I would not be surprised if this was a common thing.
[1] And then said that he would outright deny ever saying that if we told anyone. In hindsight, this should have been a red flag to me. [2] I have no prior drug use, but I did answer yes to things on the recruiter's questionnaire, like if I had seasonal allergies
Learn the fucking laws people, and I mean you too police officers, and fucking use them properly.
While I agree with your statement in full, it belies the problem. You see, law enforcement has not caught up with the ease of harassing people online. 1) Most police units are barely aware of online activity past trying to catch people boasting on Facebook about breaking the law. 2) Even if they were aware, most don't see this harassment as more than some form of bullying (and most adults don't see bullying as anywhere near the huge problem it really is) 3) If they are aware and see it as a real, law-related problem, they probably have no funds to pursue it 4) If they have funds to pursue it, they need to be able to identify the perp 5) In most cases the harasser, the site(s) where s/he does most of the harassing, or both are in another jurisdiction. Now their legal system has to be involved. 6) GOTO 1
This ignores the barriers to getting the identity of the harasser, even if you can get the site to cooperate (unlikely without a subpoena/warrant, unlikely without cooperation from their area's law enforcement, etc.) such as tor, throw-away accounts, and proxies. I fully agree that existing laws can be used against these kind of horrible people, but only if those existing laws actually apply to that person and you jump through a number of other hoops (and pursuing even one of the harassers will likely make the others up their antics.)
Even a civil suit would be incredibly hard, because you have to have the money to hire a P.I. to get that information, then still go through juridstictions. I don't know if restraining orders even hold across state lines, or how you would set them up (the accused has to stay at least 10 hops away? Cannot maintain an account on another website held by the protected?)
Taking legal action against the nastier harassers (like the person who called in the shooting threat when Anita Sarkeesian was going to give a speech) would likely help a great deal. A lot of these kind of people get power from their pseudo-anonymity, so the threat of removing the mask will scare many of them off. But this success would require cooperation on a national if not international level, with the likes of the FBI or Interpol spending considerable time and money for even just a few.
Fucking anti not nice to be law bullshit.
Ah, but politicians! Politicians don't actually care about doing anything, they only care about the appearance of doing something. Raise taxes and/or retask law enforcement efforts to go after online harassers? You'd have all sorts of people calling for their heads in an instant, saying it's a waste of resources that will give little reward that requires tremendous effort. Now, laws... laws are easy and relatively cheap. You make some new law/bill, give it a cute name ("NONETBULLY Act of 2014"), and write overly-broad definitions and penalties that would get struck down quickly when challenged in court, but give the people the idea that something has been done. So you get overwhelming bi-partisan support because it also distracts from any more local and tangible problems and, boom, you get to hit the campaign trails declaring you took a "firm" stance against online harassment.
And, in the end, all the bill actually did was fund a number of riders: the park has a new bird bath, the library on fifth was renamed to Steve Irwin Memorial Library, Barbara down in the cafeteria is recognized for Best Sloppy Joes of the 20-Aughts, and some corn farmers get an extra bump in their water subsidy. Effect on curbing online harassment: none.
Why exactly do I need Gbit service to bring healthcare into my home?
While I can't speak directly to what the OP was thinking of, I can think of a future where regular examinations or long-term monitoring are done in the person's home, talking to nurses and doctors over the internet using "pedestrian" versions of medical equipment we have today.
Your doctor/insurance provider sends you a relatively inexpensive set of electronics that you can store in the closet when not in use. When you see your doc via the internet, a few 3D cameras and these items can do most stuff. Stomach problems? Swallow this tiny camera and the live feed goes to the doc. Ear ache? Put a disc to your ear and a telescopic arm will move about to find the proper viewing angle for your canal, along with a light source.
Such things are quite a bit off, obviously, but will trickle into the home eventually, the same way that computers and the internet did. There will be limitations, of course, but over time those will decrease as well.
Though your average person might not get used to the idea of using a tool to probe their rectum...
It also works great as a bargaining tactic in the future. "What's that? You would like us to build our second GigaFactory in Detroit? Well, we might consider, but it sure is a pity that your state bans our sales. 'Course, we probably lost all kind of sales revenue from that move, and that will need to be made up somehow..."
They didn't have to Michigan is the home of Detroit the former "Motor City".
FTFY. Detroit is a shadow of its former self, thanks in large part to its heavy reliance on the Big Three. While it may still be referred to as "Motor City", the auto companies took much of their production lines and moved them to Mexico or elsewhere, even if HQ is still around there. Flint is much the same.
That the state legislature has no problem banning Tesla direct sales despite such actions speaks volumes about where the interests of the legislators truly lie.
I would love to see this get signed and, rather than spending money on a lawsuit, Tesla opens a factory in Detroit/Flint. No state rep is going to fight against jobs (even if the plants are mostly automated and make few permanent jobs, there's at least construction,) so all of them will be eating crow when people find out that all of these nice, shiny, and by-that-time-affordable cars are being moved to other states and can't be sold in Michigan. Once the plant is up I'd expect the law to be reversed quickly.
Considering that HBO is always an extra charge over regular cable (AFAIK), that the cable companies pay HBO to carry it (as opposed to some other channels, as I understand, like Shopping Network, that pay cable to carry it), and that this isn't the end of HBO on cable, I would be heavily surprised if it caused any change in cable prices.
And if they do go up, good: just gives people more of a reason to abandon them.
I'm pretty sure that not everyone agrees to such a thing.
While I've not had the pleasure of a relationship, I would think that a healthy, long-term relationship would involve knowing the boundaries of each other, both mentally and sexually (and maybe politically.) There will be some bumps (excuse the pun) as those boundaries are felt out (okay I'll stop now) early on, but eventually each one will know what they can and can't do both in public and private without explicit permission.
Another way to look at it is personal space in general. As a kid (and even the rare occasion as an adult) my mom can wipe a stain or smudge on me without asking me, or my dad can hold my shoulder while talking to me about something serious or to comfort me, and I wouldn't feel uncomfortable at all. But if a stranger or even a loose acquaintance did that it would make me incredibly uncomfortable and be seen as a massive invasion of private space (the wiping more than the shoulder.)
There's also implicit vs. explicit trust. A long-term relationship has implicit trust, but marriage makes it explicit.
I admit that I don't follow football myself, but--from what I recall of time with my family--watching live games was often a very social event and important amongst many fans. I'm sure that core fans will go back and re-watch old games, but in my limited experience I think that a stand-alone package that shows games live (even if that's all it shows) would be far, far more appealing.
Beginning in 2015, HBO will offer a streaming service to cord-cutters and other nonsubscribers on an a la carte basis. It should be noted that the announcement HBO released to the media does not explicitly say the service will be HBO GO (or that it won't), only that it will be "a stand-alone, over-the-top, HBO service." And, of course, it doesn't say how much the service will cost. It doesn't even say it will carry every HBO show, let alone what archival material will be available — HBO GO has a lot.
The announcement says HBO will "work with our current partners" and "explore models with new partners," but it seems inevitable that an arrangement like this will unsettle cable providers who have been able to use legitimate access to premium networks like HBO as one of the remaining barriers against cord-cutting, the practice of declining to have a cable subscription in favor of watching online.
Emphasis mine. While that incredibly vague part about partners could suggest tying it to ISPs, the straight-up statement of "stand-alone" contradicts such an idea.
But, even if it was a package deal, that's not new to ISPs: many have bundles with anti-virus subscriptions and some might do Hulu or Netflix trials. None of these are big pushers, however, and HBO would be a game changer in that.
This was just announced today; I guess the submitter assumes everyone is plastered to their many-tech-related RSS feeds and already read about it.
Of course, "announced" is a lose term here. As far as I'm aware, all they've said is that they're going to offer a new streaming option. That's it. No price, nothing about what HBO content it will have (just the live feed? Can you watch individual episodes? Can you watch past series?). Just that it's coming.
Considering that HBO is one of the main reasons a lot of people don't abandon cable, I wonder if the various cable companies are worried. I can just imagine them rounding up the lobbyists, telling them to throw money at whatever Congresscritter they have in their pocket to somehow make this illegal.
Live sports are the other "main" reason, of course. If the likes of ESPN and the NFL make stand-alone streaming services (I believe they have the "requires cable subscription" offerings at the moment, like HBO already has) then it could be the death knell of cable subscriptions in our country.
Yeah, that was my thought on skimming TFA. If the company pays, what happens if the woman leaves the job (be it quitting, fired, laid off)? Does she have to pay back some or all of the amount the company paid in order to keep access to her eggs? What if the company goes under? I couldn't find mention of this in the article.
Also, the line quoted by jargonburn ("helping women be more productive human beings") is the parting quote from the article said by Christy Jones, founder of Extend Fertility. I expected this to be a line from some old male, so seeing it come from a woman is a tad boggling as I also think the line is demeaning towards women.
they use their current nightmare system to manipulate companies into doing their bidding
If there's a conspiracy behind our current corporate tax policy, I'm sure that it's the large corporations manipulating the government to create these onerous tax laws so that the government can manipulate any growing competition to the large corporations. Those tax breaks? Feel good fuzzies for the common people that are easy for the large corporations to deal with but harder for the growing ones.
Large corporations are the ones manipulating our government, not the other way around.
[T]he Alliance tried to chemically modify its populace to be peaceful. This worked perfectly; it eliminated violence, but in the process it had a fatal side effect. The inhabitants lost all ambition;they stopped doing any work, stopped talking to each other, stopped reproducing and eventually stopped even feeding. For 0.1% of the population it had the opposite effect and caused extremely violent behavior, beyond mere psychosis but animalism. The "survivors" of Miranda were the Reavers who started to menace the Rim planets.
A clerk has zero incentive to get you through the line as quickly as possible.
While I agree with your first line, I disagree with this.
It's been a while since I worked retail, and I never worked registers as a regular thing, but even these days I can see boards hanging on the walls of stores (sometimes back in an employee-only area, sometimes right out in front of the lines) that show rankings of either Customers Per Minute (CPM) or Items Per Minute (IPM). While I have no personal knowledge about these, I would bet they're used for, at worst, some bad management "incentive" like "you get a bag of chips if you're highest at the end of the month!" or, at best, part of promotion and raises.
I love self-checkout lines myself; as long as you only have a few items and they aren't packed with families trying to check out a cart full of groceries, you can zip right though. I get to avoid human interaction most of the time (idle chit-chat severely annoys me), bag groceries my (anal) way, and get out quickly. There's also a space-saving feature: six machines and one clerk can replace three lines that might not all be open at the same time, anyway. But, for all of that, I doubt you will ever completely get rid of cashiers. Maybe once all items have their own RFID tags and a cart can simply be scanned without having to remove stuff, but that is still quite some time off.
Not to mention that creativity often coincides with critical thinking, and critical thinkers are more likely to realize that something a company doing is illegal and have the moral fiber to blow the whistle.
So not only are creative types unnecessary to giant companies, they are an active threat and so should be avoided unless they are a known quantity (i.e. plays golf with the CEO every Saturday.)
And so we can bring this subthread back around to the main article: Octopus (octopii?) will also engage in cannibalism. http://www.livescience.com/479...
When octopuses go hunting for prey, they sometimes end up "dining" on members of their own species, and the cephalopods seem to have a taste for their victims' arm tips.
Divers have captured video of this octopus-on-octopus action in the wild for the first time on video.
In a new study, researchers described three cases of cannibalism in the common octopus — Octopus vulgaris — recorded with a camcorder by scuba divers in Ría de Vigo, Spain, located on the northeastern Atlantic coast. In two of the cases, the predators had started to eat the tips of the arms of their prey by the time the divers found them. [...] And, in one of the cases, the predator had access to more "traditional" prey in the form of mussels, but it still chose to feed on another, smaller octopus.
Maintaining the status quo is often far simpler than changing anything. Not necessarily easier, mind you, but simpler--even if it's a complex process, it's a process that's known and understood. Therefore, you don't have to think much, which is why conservatism (in the political sense of the word, not associating it with any particular party) will more often than not fight to keep things as they are and get those kind of people. Fighting to maintain is easier than learning to adapt or understand.
There's also a hint of self-conceit in there, I think. It goes like this: If something is done now, then it must be Right, so if I do it I am Right. But if you change the way things are done, then I will be Wrong to at least some extent. I cannot stand being Wrong; therefore, I must fight your way even if your way is right and my way is wrong, because the only thing worse than me being Wrong is you being Right.
Anyway, change certainly should not be done for the sake of change, but neither should change be ignored for the sake of tradition.
A lot of companies, namely beverage companies, already do this in the US. Things are listed in both metric and imperial, it's just a matter of which is listed first (normally dependent on which number is nicely rounded.) All the companies would have to do to fully convert is remove one of the labels.
The odd sizes for those first measured in imperial might cause some confusion at first, but you can be sure the companies will waste no time coming out with new bottles that have nice, round numbers, contain less than the original bottle, and cost the same.
With no way to get there and no means to communicate, the fact of the existence of extra-terrestrial life simply won't have much impact on anyone's day-to-day life.
For now. I'm not saying we'll have the ability to travel or communicate in the near future, but if we are able to detect extra-terrestrial life it will probably be first done either because they either made their planet go nuclear and we see the explosion, or because they've been broadcasting various signals that we can pick out.
Since it will likely be the latter (the former would most likely register as "weird, a planet just blew up" with no guarantee it held life), it will affect pretty much every astrophysicist on the planet. Every single telescope we can bring to bare will be pointed at that single planet, trying to capture as much information as possible. Assuming it makes it here without heavy distortion (dunno how likely that is), if their broadcasting systems resemble anything we've done as a species we might be able to decode it. At this point it gets turned over to linguistics specialists who will see if they can interpret the language. And if we get video! Biologists, anthropologists, artists, whole slews of academic departments will invest years analyzing it (not to mention the hits for Youtube uploads.)
If we are able to get rough translations we may even be able to learn things from this species (as opposed to about this species). When we receive the signals it means their tech is at least on parity with ours back so many years, but could also be far more advanced. Even if the information we receive is from their first broadcasts, and those started about the same time as ours, they could still have breakthroughs in other fields that we don't have or that we did in different ways. This will be extra helpful if we get their version of PBS, History, or Discovery (before their society started filling it with reality shows.)
While most of these discoveries will be minimal (and, granted, we've had to accomplish a lot to get to the point we can understand them), if there's any giant leap in science (agriculture, travel, power generation and transmission, weaponry) it will affect every human on the planet. So, yes, if life can be confirmed the furor will die down after a few weeks, but if we can do something with that information a few years later a morning news show will start "Hey, remember those aliens we discovered a few years back? Scientists have been able to figure out how they inverted gravity!"
And, of course, this will add motivation to space travel and communication, with the far goal of visiting or at least communicating with ET.
I also wonder if there's an overlap with those who don't trust climate scientists or scientists in general vs. those who trust a single, discredited scientist as well as a celebrity about vaccines causing autism (whether or not there was enough trust to avoid getting the vaccines.)
Slashdot Mirror
+5 well earned. I would like to add that a lack of economic suffrage affects political suffrage. Maybe someone below the poverty line would like to vote, but because money is so tight they have two (or three!) jobs and can't get the time off to go to the polls. This is especially made harder in some states by encroaching voter laws and cutting down the number of early voting days, locations, or both.
I enlisted in late 2009, right before the Army significantly raised the enlistment requirements, and before going in for the pre-enlistment stuff (urinalysis, medical check, etc.) my recruiter had myself and others going to enlist fill out a yes/no questionnaire. After that they took us into the office, closed the door, and told us that if we didn't answer "No" to every one of those questions (which included prior drug use) we would be turned away from the military.[1] So I was a good little lemming, did so, and went to Basic four months later.[2] While I never thought to poll my fellow enlisted, I would not be surprised if this was a common thing.
[1] And then said that he would outright deny ever saying that if we told anyone. In hindsight, this should have been a red flag to me.
[2] I have no prior drug use, but I did answer yes to things on the recruiter's questionnaire, like if I had seasonal allergies
Don't forget Achievements!
While I agree with your statement in full, it belies the problem. You see, law enforcement has not caught up with the ease of harassing people online.
1) Most police units are barely aware of online activity past trying to catch people boasting on Facebook about breaking the law.
2) Even if they were aware, most don't see this harassment as more than some form of bullying (and most adults don't see bullying as anywhere near the huge problem it really is)
3) If they are aware and see it as a real, law-related problem, they probably have no funds to pursue it
4) If they have funds to pursue it, they need to be able to identify the perp
5) In most cases the harasser, the site(s) where s/he does most of the harassing, or both are in another jurisdiction. Now their legal system has to be involved.
6) GOTO 1
This ignores the barriers to getting the identity of the harasser, even if you can get the site to cooperate (unlikely without a subpoena/warrant, unlikely without cooperation from their area's law enforcement, etc.) such as tor, throw-away accounts, and proxies. I fully agree that existing laws can be used against these kind of horrible people, but only if those existing laws actually apply to that person and you jump through a number of other hoops (and pursuing even one of the harassers will likely make the others up their antics.)
Even a civil suit would be incredibly hard, because you have to have the money to hire a P.I. to get that information, then still go through juridstictions. I don't know if restraining orders even hold across state lines, or how you would set them up (the accused has to stay at least 10 hops away? Cannot maintain an account on another website held by the protected?)
Taking legal action against the nastier harassers (like the person who called in the shooting threat when Anita Sarkeesian was going to give a speech) would likely help a great deal. A lot of these kind of people get power from their pseudo-anonymity, so the threat of removing the mask will scare many of them off. But this success would require cooperation on a national if not international level, with the likes of the FBI or Interpol spending considerable time and money for even just a few.
Ah, but politicians! Politicians don't actually care about doing anything, they only care about the appearance of doing something. Raise taxes and/or retask law enforcement efforts to go after online harassers? You'd have all sorts of people calling for their heads in an instant, saying it's a waste of resources that will give little reward that requires tremendous effort. Now, laws... laws are easy and relatively cheap. You make some new law/bill, give it a cute name ("NONETBULLY Act of 2014"), and write overly-broad definitions and penalties that would get struck down quickly when challenged in court, but give the people the idea that something has been done. So you get overwhelming bi-partisan support because it also distracts from any more local and tangible problems and, boom, you get to hit the campaign trails declaring you took a "firm" stance against online harassment.
And, in the end, all the bill actually did was fund a number of riders: the park has a new bird bath, the library on fifth was renamed to Steve Irwin Memorial Library, Barbara down in the cafeteria is recognized for Best Sloppy Joes of the 20-Aughts, and some corn farmers get an extra bump in their water subsidy. Effect on curbing online harassment: none.
While I can't speak directly to what the OP was thinking of, I can think of a future where regular examinations or long-term monitoring are done in the person's home, talking to nurses and doctors over the internet using "pedestrian" versions of medical equipment we have today.
Your doctor/insurance provider sends you a relatively inexpensive set of electronics that you can store in the closet when not in use. When you see your doc via the internet, a few 3D cameras and these items can do most stuff. Stomach problems? Swallow this tiny camera and the live feed goes to the doc. Ear ache? Put a disc to your ear and a telescopic arm will move about to find the proper viewing angle for your canal, along with a light source.
Such things are quite a bit off, obviously, but will trickle into the home eventually, the same way that computers and the internet did. There will be limitations, of course, but over time those will decrease as well.
Though your average person might not get used to the idea of using a tool to probe their rectum...
I've spent years trying to pretend that Coldfusion isn't real, but somehow I keep running into it now and then.
It also works great as a bargaining tactic in the future. "What's that? You would like us to build our second GigaFactory in Detroit? Well, we might consider, but it sure is a pity that your state bans our sales. 'Course, we probably lost all kind of sales revenue from that move, and that will need to be made up somehow..."
FTFY. Detroit is a shadow of its former self, thanks in large part to its heavy reliance on the Big Three. While it may still be referred to as "Motor City", the auto companies took much of their production lines and moved them to Mexico or elsewhere, even if HQ is still around there. Flint is much the same.
That the state legislature has no problem banning Tesla direct sales despite such actions speaks volumes about where the interests of the legislators truly lie.
I would love to see this get signed and, rather than spending money on a lawsuit, Tesla opens a factory in Detroit/Flint. No state rep is going to fight against jobs (even if the plants are mostly automated and make few permanent jobs, there's at least construction,) so all of them will be eating crow when people find out that all of these nice, shiny, and by-that-time-affordable cars are being moved to other states and can't be sold in Michigan. Once the plant is up I'd expect the law to be reversed quickly.
Considering that HBO is always an extra charge over regular cable (AFAIK), that the cable companies pay HBO to carry it (as opposed to some other channels, as I understand, like Shopping Network, that pay cable to carry it), and that this isn't the end of HBO on cable, I would be heavily surprised if it caused any change in cable prices.
And if they do go up, good: just gives people more of a reason to abandon them.
While I've not had the pleasure of a relationship, I would think that a healthy, long-term relationship would involve knowing the boundaries of each other, both mentally and sexually (and maybe politically.) There will be some bumps (excuse the pun) as those boundaries are felt out (okay I'll stop now) early on, but eventually each one will know what they can and can't do both in public and private without explicit permission.
Another way to look at it is personal space in general. As a kid (and even the rare occasion as an adult) my mom can wipe a stain or smudge on me without asking me, or my dad can hold my shoulder while talking to me about something serious or to comfort me, and I wouldn't feel uncomfortable at all. But if a stranger or even a loose acquaintance did that it would make me incredibly uncomfortable and be seen as a massive invasion of private space (the wiping more than the shoulder.)
There's also implicit vs. explicit trust. A long-term relationship has implicit trust, but marriage makes it explicit.
Interesting, thanks for the link.
I admit that I don't follow football myself, but--from what I recall of time with my family--watching live games was often a very social event and important amongst many fans. I'm sure that core fans will go back and re-watch old games, but in my limited experience I think that a stand-alone package that shows games live (even if that's all it shows) would be far, far more appealing.
Where did you read that? At least per this NPR article:
Emphasis mine. While that incredibly vague part about partners could suggest tying it to ISPs, the straight-up statement of "stand-alone" contradicts such an idea.
But, even if it was a package deal, that's not new to ISPs: many have bundles with anti-virus subscriptions and some might do Hulu or Netflix trials. None of these are big pushers, however, and HBO would be a game changer in that.
As opposed to when the government gives them a local monopoly?
This was just announced today; I guess the submitter assumes everyone is plastered to their many-tech-related RSS feeds and already read about it.
Of course, "announced" is a lose term here. As far as I'm aware, all they've said is that they're going to offer a new streaming option. That's it. No price, nothing about what HBO content it will have (just the live feed? Can you watch individual episodes? Can you watch past series?). Just that it's coming.
Considering that HBO is one of the main reasons a lot of people don't abandon cable, I wonder if the various cable companies are worried. I can just imagine them rounding up the lobbyists, telling them to throw money at whatever Congresscritter they have in their pocket to somehow make this illegal.
Live sports are the other "main" reason, of course. If the likes of ESPN and the NFL make stand-alone streaming services (I believe they have the "requires cable subscription" offerings at the moment, like HBO already has) then it could be the death knell of cable subscriptions in our country.
Yeah, that was my thought on skimming TFA. If the company pays, what happens if the woman leaves the job (be it quitting, fired, laid off)? Does she have to pay back some or all of the amount the company paid in order to keep access to her eggs? What if the company goes under? I couldn't find mention of this in the article.
Also, the line quoted by jargonburn ("helping women be more productive human beings") is the parting quote from the article said by Christy Jones, founder of Extend Fertility. I expected this to be a line from some old male, so seeing it come from a woman is a tad boggling as I also think the line is demeaning towards women.
If there's a conspiracy behind our current corporate tax policy, I'm sure that it's the large corporations manipulating the government to create these onerous tax laws so that the government can manipulate any growing competition to the large corporations. Those tax breaks? Feel good fuzzies for the common people that are easy for the large corporations to deal with but harder for the growing ones.
Large corporations are the ones manipulating our government, not the other way around.
Yup. http://firefly.wikia.com/wiki/...
So are magicians.
While I agree with your first line, I disagree with this.
It's been a while since I worked retail, and I never worked registers as a regular thing, but even these days I can see boards hanging on the walls of stores (sometimes back in an employee-only area, sometimes right out in front of the lines) that show rankings of either Customers Per Minute (CPM) or Items Per Minute (IPM). While I have no personal knowledge about these, I would bet they're used for, at worst, some bad management "incentive" like "you get a bag of chips if you're highest at the end of the month!" or, at best, part of promotion and raises.
I love self-checkout lines myself; as long as you only have a few items and they aren't packed with families trying to check out a cart full of groceries, you can zip right though. I get to avoid human interaction most of the time (idle chit-chat severely annoys me), bag groceries my (anal) way, and get out quickly. There's also a space-saving feature: six machines and one clerk can replace three lines that might not all be open at the same time, anyway. But, for all of that, I doubt you will ever completely get rid of cashiers. Maybe once all items have their own RFID tags and a cart can simply be scanned without having to remove stuff, but that is still quite some time off.
Not to mention that creativity often coincides with critical thinking, and critical thinkers are more likely to realize that something a company doing is illegal and have the moral fiber to blow the whistle.
So not only are creative types unnecessary to giant companies, they are an active threat and so should be avoided unless they are a known quantity (i.e. plays golf with the CEO every Saturday.)
And so we can bring this subthread back around to the main article: Octopus (octopii?) will also engage in cannibalism. http://www.livescience.com/479...
Maintaining the status quo is often far simpler than changing anything. Not necessarily easier, mind you, but simpler--even if it's a complex process, it's a process that's known and understood. Therefore, you don't have to think much, which is why conservatism (in the political sense of the word, not associating it with any particular party) will more often than not fight to keep things as they are and get those kind of people. Fighting to maintain is easier than learning to adapt or understand.
There's also a hint of self-conceit in there, I think. It goes like this: If something is done now, then it must be Right, so if I do it I am Right. But if you change the way things are done, then I will be Wrong to at least some extent. I cannot stand being Wrong; therefore, I must fight your way even if your way is right and my way is wrong, because the only thing worse than me being Wrong is you being Right.
Anyway, change certainly should not be done for the sake of change, but neither should change be ignored for the sake of tradition.
A lot of companies, namely beverage companies, already do this in the US. Things are listed in both metric and imperial, it's just a matter of which is listed first (normally dependent on which number is nicely rounded.) All the companies would have to do to fully convert is remove one of the labels.
The odd sizes for those first measured in imperial might cause some confusion at first, but you can be sure the companies will waste no time coming out with new bottles that have nice, round numbers, contain less than the original bottle, and cost the same.
For now. I'm not saying we'll have the ability to travel or communicate in the near future, but if we are able to detect extra-terrestrial life it will probably be first done either because they either made their planet go nuclear and we see the explosion, or because they've been broadcasting various signals that we can pick out.
Since it will likely be the latter (the former would most likely register as "weird, a planet just blew up" with no guarantee it held life), it will affect pretty much every astrophysicist on the planet. Every single telescope we can bring to bare will be pointed at that single planet, trying to capture as much information as possible. Assuming it makes it here without heavy distortion (dunno how likely that is), if their broadcasting systems resemble anything we've done as a species we might be able to decode it. At this point it gets turned over to linguistics specialists who will see if they can interpret the language. And if we get video! Biologists, anthropologists, artists, whole slews of academic departments will invest years analyzing it (not to mention the hits for Youtube uploads.)
If we are able to get rough translations we may even be able to learn things from this species (as opposed to about this species). When we receive the signals it means their tech is at least on parity with ours back so many years, but could also be far more advanced. Even if the information we receive is from their first broadcasts, and those started about the same time as ours, they could still have breakthroughs in other fields that we don't have or that we did in different ways. This will be extra helpful if we get their version of PBS, History, or Discovery (before their society started filling it with reality shows.)
While most of these discoveries will be minimal (and, granted, we've had to accomplish a lot to get to the point we can understand them), if there's any giant leap in science (agriculture, travel, power generation and transmission, weaponry) it will affect every human on the planet. So, yes, if life can be confirmed the furor will die down after a few weeks, but if we can do something with that information a few years later a morning news show will start "Hey, remember those aliens we discovered a few years back? Scientists have been able to figure out how they inverted gravity!"
And, of course, this will add motivation to space travel and communication, with the far goal of visiting or at least communicating with ET.
I also wonder if there's an overlap with those who don't trust climate scientists or scientists in general vs. those who trust a single, discredited scientist as well as a celebrity about vaccines causing autism (whether or not there was enough trust to avoid getting the vaccines.)