Really?/. is the mediator of all things moral I guess?
This guy had a point and correctly analyzed the military uses of this technology long before it was widely part of the public consciousness. What he says is still true and it doesn't take much thought to envision some pretty horrific self-locomoting autonomous weapons that GPS makes much more likely. The problem slashdotters may have with this guy is that he might be a luddite (or he could have just been a visionary protestor without an inherent hatred of tech) -- but in looking like a luddite, there is a knee jerk reaction. Like most knee jerk reactions, it's rather poorly thought.
There is also the possibility that/. has been subverted into a pro-government, pro-military, pro-establishement mouthpiece by the numerous shills of such groups. Maybe you're one of them.
I use my twitter account mostly to find news on rare occasions (one per month approximately), barely ever write. I don't even have a facebook account at all. I am part of the general public. Because some people use twitter and FB to self-expose everything, is not a basis for supporting government intrusion into every person's private life.
Here's the way to stop it. Gather some DNA from high level politicians. Replicate enough of it so it you have useful quantity. Spread it around crime scenes, porn, whatever. Make sure that politician is in a DNA database.
Yeah -- Obama being basically a GOP posterchild in every other policy -- how ironic. After 8 years, fucking finally he does something a liberal could be proud of.
(actually, one word is impossible due to the lameness filter, and honestly some other words would be good, like: hahaha, die bastards die, suck it, etc. etc.)
Well, the bickering is helpful if it exposes Hillary Clinton as the vanguard of the Democrats' transition into the New GOP. I don't know what it takes for people to see that she's a right wing bloodthirsty neocon willing to ignore information in order to start useless war. Maybe this will help, from way back when she voted to go to war in Iraq:
~ Code pink intro: war in Iraq will harm American and Iraqi families and cost a lot.
6:30 HRC parrots the WMD arguments, blames the danger to Iraqis on Hussein, ignores harm to Americans, financial costs, and the fact that Iraq was not a threat to the US nor involved in 9/11.
8:52 HRC lies about careful review of WMD info. HRC never even read the National Intelligence Estimate which while suggesting WMDs existed, also contained significant disagreements with that conclusion that a reader not interested in a particular outcome would have agreed called the whole thing into question.
10:00 Audience member: not up to the US to disarm Hussein, up to the world community, Iraq has no connection to terrorism, not only are Iraqi people in danger, so are US people, and will harm the economy. It's reckless.
11:14 HRC: The world community would not take on difficult problems without US forcing the issue. Goes on and on about Bosnia. Segues into how GWB tax cuts are a bad idea.
13:29 Interesting note on the negative effect of the tax cuts: "Here at home, this administration is bankrupting our economy forcing us to make the worst kinds of false choices between national and homeland security, which they don't fund..."
-- IOW, HRC would have preferred GWB raise taxes for more war and domestic surveillance. --
14:12 HRC is given a pink slip
14:20 HRC goes off: "I am the Senator from NY I will never put my people at risk..."
Don't be a retard. The name means nothing, at least to liberals like me. His actions however make him somewhat to the right of Richard Nixon. For Obama to be worse is somewhat of an anti-achievement, but face it, he has engaged in more war and more surveillance than Nixon could even have imagined, and he got Nixon's health care plan passed.
So, while you are there making fun of republicans, what you fail to recognize is that the Democrats ARE the fucking new Republicans.
Don't forget destroying the War Powers Act to wage war in Libya. Remember to thank Obama when another Dick Cheney type commits random war without even a nod to Congress or the Constitution.
Re:The Civilization Series will never be the same.
on
Leonard Nimoy Dies At 83
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Civ 4 was a great game, and part of it was his narrations. He really had a way of saying things beautifully. Maybe my tribute will be playing out a game this weekend.
I think you make a very good point. I wasn't close to my grandparents and I would very much like to have heard about their lives. My mom and I had a close relationship and I'm glad I don't have a bunch of videos for exactly the reason you say -- it would be too much... too much something. Don't know how to say it.
There's an interesting This American Life about a person who's mother left a pile of letters to be opened once per year on the daughter's birthday, and one for her wedding. It started out very good, but ended not so great (see Act 1) ("... you shouldn't be dragged back into the grave with them every year...):
So I started this post, listened again to that TAL episode, and coming back to this post, will sort of disagree with what I said at first. I still think periodic mailing is a bad idea, but maybe the poster could make the videos, but they would be given to the daughter immediately after the funeral, and in a whole pile all at once (backups kept somewhere in case of accidental or intentional destruction). Then in the future, if she chooses, she can watch what she wants -- all, some, or none. This leaves watching as a choice she may or may not exercise -- in contrast, the periodic shipment seems like it has a good chance of becoming a source of resentment and pain (i.e., why should a ghost appear on the wedding to potentially create great sadness or feelings of being a disappointment or whatever).
I lost my mom -- had the same reaction you had. For me, the tapes would have become a huge burden and source of anxiety.
And it's been a while since I read the Foundation Series, but didn't Hari Seldon's eventually diverge from current events? Even he couldn't manage a perfect set of videos.
For some context, my mom died 27 years ago, and so when I talk about re-finding that note a year ago, it wasn't like it rekindled memories of something recent -- these are memories from almost three decades ago.
That isn't a hurt she might want to work thru in the midst of other big life events. She might be really having fun with her friends on graduation day and not feel like opening that wound, and if she does not sit down and watch the video of day feel guilty at betraying your memory.
This is really insightful. My mom died when I was 20, which is probably better than if she had died when I was 6 -- or maybe worse, I don't know. I skipped my graduation ceremony for college and graduate school (no second parent either). I buried myself in doing things, hard and difficult things, as a way to alleviate the pain. I really don't know if I'd want to have to relive that pain periodically by watching videos. In fact I know I wouldn't have -- I'd inevitably feel like I was in some way, disappointing a ghost or missing that person or some other random negative emotion.
I probably didn't deal with things the right way when my mom died, and my response affected my whole life. I still will pick up a subject of one kind or another and totally immerse myself in it -- just like I did back then -- but now it is out of habit. It isn't even a joy thing. It's simply a means to get to a state of not-existing. I suppose it is better than having had used alcohol or drugs to achieve that feeling, but finding and engaging in new subjects at a totally immersive compulsive level isn't exactly healthy either.
I don't know what to to tell the poster -- I don't think I'm saying "don't leave videos" -- I was older and more aware than I would have been at six, I didn't have a second parent to pick up the slack, and I had my own personality oddities fully baked in. But, he should consider that it is possible that the kindest thing he can do, is to not leave a stack of videos. That making and leaving these videos is perhaps his way to not think about the disease and while they are a comfort to him, they would be a huge burden to his daughter.
Just last year while moving, I found a short final thoughts note my mom left for me, and I just totally broke down over it. That was a year ago and it still haunts me a little. A video would have been debilitating, at least for me.
2) If you want to actually use (G)PG(P) your recipient also has to grok it, install software to use it, and you have to exchange keys. This is a massive hurdle to overcome for all but the most dedicated cryptonerds. Until there is a majority of people who want to use encrypted mail, that will carry on being the case.
Of the hundreds of people I exchange email with, about four regularly use encryption. Even amongst people who value privacy, GPG use is rare. It doesn't seem like it should be hard, but it is, and there are some confusing things about it. For example, adding a public key requires closing and restarting the email app for it to work, but there isn't even a popup that notifies about this. Recipe for frustration and rejection.
You mean Democrats, the New GOP, right? A more pro-war, pro-surveillance, pro-wall-street group of assholes could only be found... nowhere. The difference between the Old GOP and the New GOP can be summed up in total over the issues of abortion and gay marriage. Other than that, the two groups are entirely fungible.
Seriously, Democrats today are to the right of Nixon and do everything he loved to do (war and surveil) and one thing he couldn't do (Nixon Care, conveniently relabeled Obama Care).
So get over yourself -- you're just a blue team neo-con no better than a red team neo-con.
This AC needs modding up. The real problem with a robotic army is that the soldiers are safe and war becomes an easy go-to solution whereas constituents tend to get pissed and fail to re-elect people they think are spilling blood for no reason. Making war cheap, in the shed blood sense, is a very bad idea.
How much would you pay for a copy of Windows 3.1? I'm no Microsoft shill -- I don't even use Windows -- but the people paying for Windows today aren't paying for something that was laid down on a disc 20 years ago. They're paying for ongoing updates, bug fixes, increased functionality, wholly different functionality, etc. etc. That Alanis Morrisette song "Isn't It Ironic" -- it's just as grammatically fucked up as it ever was despite being out there for the last 20 years.
Same with me -- I rarely listen to music while driving these days. I listen to podcasts and audiobooks. I remember as a teen riding around with my Grandpa being annoyed at him listening to AM talk radio rather than playing music. Now I'm doing essentially the same thing, just with better technology.
Radio Lab did an interesting show on Fritz Haber -- his work resulted in commercial fertilizer without which we'd probably have five or six billion fewer people on the planet because you can't mine guano forever at a rate faster than it is replaced, but he also pioneered one of the most gruesome weapons out there. It's a very strange tale.
This is true. When I was a kid in the 80s (teen years), I bought lots of records and CDs. By my late 20s (late 90s), that had dwindled considerably, more so in my 30s, and now that I'm in my late 40s, I basically buy no music. Maybe a song per year on average, if that much. I don't engage in filesharing.
So the $30 or $40 I spend per year on Pandora for an ad free account, which I use probably less than 10 hours per month, is comprised in part of money I would never have given the music industry in the absence of something like Pandora. Note, it isn't that Pandora caused me stop buying music -- I had already stopped more than a decade before I started listening to Pandora. For the music industry, whatever they get out of my Pandora usage should be considered pure gravy that they wouldn't have gotten if Pandora or something like it did not exist.
I have a paid pandora account. After about a month of liking and disliking stuff, the "station" became very good -- now, a year after starting it, I hear a song I don't like maybe once in two hours.
With radio, going off my recollection from the bad old days, I mostly heard ads and music I didn't like and maybe a song or two I wanted to listen to once per hour.
As for the price Pandora is paying, is anyone asking whether Spotify is paying too much? Anyone with a song Pandora is playing has something like 100 years or whatever ridiculous term copyrights last, to milk it. If it gto a million plays per year, that's $100k for one song. $1M for ten songs. A high school graduate can expect to make $1.2M in an entire lifetime: http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/...
I agree with almost all of this, and it seems you have a real interest in protecting the interests of the little guy so to speak, but #16 wholly runs against that grain. If you take out the teeth from civil lawsuits, you empower Ford to never stop making Pintos, or fertilizer manufacturers to blow up as many neighborhoods as they want. This would be a massive form of corporate welfare that would benefit large monied interests and make regular people incapable of striking back in any meaningful manner.
Slashdot Mirror
Really? /. is the mediator of all things moral I guess?
This guy had a point and correctly analyzed the military uses of this technology long before it was widely part of the public consciousness. What he says is still true and it doesn't take much thought to envision some pretty horrific self-locomoting autonomous weapons that GPS makes much more likely. The problem slashdotters may have with this guy is that he might be a luddite (or he could have just been a visionary protestor without an inherent hatred of tech) -- but in looking like a luddite, there is a knee jerk reaction. Like most knee jerk reactions, it's rather poorly thought.
There is also the possibility that /. has been subverted into a pro-government, pro-military, pro-establishement mouthpiece by the numerous shills of such groups. Maybe you're one of them.
I use my twitter account mostly to find news on rare occasions (one per month approximately), barely ever write. I don't even have a facebook account at all. I am part of the general public. Because some people use twitter and FB to self-expose everything, is not a basis for supporting government intrusion into every person's private life.
Here's the way to stop it. Gather some DNA from high level politicians. Replicate enough of it so it you have useful quantity. Spread it around crime scenes, porn, whatever. Make sure that politician is in a DNA database.
Yeah -- subpar. Every time I ask FedEx or UPS to mail a letter for me for less than 50c, they laugh.
Yeah -- Obama being basically a GOP posterchild in every other policy -- how ironic. After 8 years, fucking finally he does something a liberal could be proud of.
Finally!
(actually, one word is impossible due to the lameness filter, and honestly some other words would be good, like: hahaha, die bastards die, suck it, etc. etc.)
Even here, on /., a comment in support of the Constitution and privacy is downmodded. Things are pretty hopeless.
Well, the bickering is helpful if it exposes Hillary Clinton as the vanguard of the Democrats' transition into the New GOP. I don't know what it takes for people to see that she's a right wing bloodthirsty neocon willing to ignore information in order to start useless war. Maybe this will help, from way back when she voted to go to war in Iraq:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Don't be a retard. The name means nothing, at least to liberals like me. His actions however make him somewhat to the right of Richard Nixon. For Obama to be worse is somewhat of an anti-achievement, but face it, he has engaged in more war and more surveillance than Nixon could even have imagined, and he got Nixon's health care plan passed.
So, while you are there making fun of republicans, what you fail to recognize is that the Democrats ARE the fucking new Republicans.
Don't forget destroying the War Powers Act to wage war in Libya. Remember to thank Obama when another Dick Cheney type commits random war without even a nod to Congress or the Constitution.
Civ 4 was a great game, and part of it was his narrations. He really had a way of saying things beautifully. Maybe my tribute will be playing out a game this weekend.
I think you make a very good point. I wasn't close to my grandparents and I would very much like to have heard about their lives. My mom and I had a close relationship and I'm glad I don't have a bunch of videos for exactly the reason you say -- it would be too much ... too much something. Don't know how to say it.
There's an interesting This American Life about a person who's mother left a pile of letters to be opened once per year on the daughter's birthday, and one for her wedding. It started out very good, but ended not so great (see Act 1) ("... you shouldn't be dragged back into the grave with them every year ...):
http://www.thisamericanlife.or...
So I started this post, listened again to that TAL episode, and coming back to this post, will sort of disagree with what I said at first. I still think periodic mailing is a bad idea, but maybe the poster could make the videos, but they would be given to the daughter immediately after the funeral, and in a whole pile all at once (backups kept somewhere in case of accidental or intentional destruction). Then in the future, if she chooses, she can watch what she wants -- all, some, or none. This leaves watching as a choice she may or may not exercise -- in contrast, the periodic shipment seems like it has a good chance of becoming a source of resentment and pain (i.e., why should a ghost appear on the wedding to potentially create great sadness or feelings of being a disappointment or whatever).
I lost my mom -- had the same reaction you had. For me, the tapes would have become a huge burden and source of anxiety.
And it's been a while since I read the Foundation Series, but didn't Hari Seldon's eventually diverge from current events? Even he couldn't manage a perfect set of videos.
For some context, my mom died 27 years ago, and so when I talk about re-finding that note a year ago, it wasn't like it rekindled memories of something recent -- these are memories from almost three decades ago.
This is really insightful. My mom died when I was 20, which is probably better than if she had died when I was 6 -- or maybe worse, I don't know. I skipped my graduation ceremony for college and graduate school (no second parent either). I buried myself in doing things, hard and difficult things, as a way to alleviate the pain. I really don't know if I'd want to have to relive that pain periodically by watching videos. In fact I know I wouldn't have -- I'd inevitably feel like I was in some way, disappointing a ghost or missing that person or some other random negative emotion.
I probably didn't deal with things the right way when my mom died, and my response affected my whole life. I still will pick up a subject of one kind or another and totally immerse myself in it -- just like I did back then -- but now it is out of habit. It isn't even a joy thing. It's simply a means to get to a state of not-existing. I suppose it is better than having had used alcohol or drugs to achieve that feeling, but finding and engaging in new subjects at a totally immersive compulsive level isn't exactly healthy either.
I don't know what to to tell the poster -- I don't think I'm saying "don't leave videos" -- I was older and more aware than I would have been at six, I didn't have a second parent to pick up the slack, and I had my own personality oddities fully baked in. But, he should consider that it is possible that the kindest thing he can do, is to not leave a stack of videos. That making and leaving these videos is perhaps his way to not think about the disease and while they are a comfort to him, they would be a huge burden to his daughter.
Just last year while moving, I found a short final thoughts note my mom left for me, and I just totally broke down over it. That was a year ago and it still haunts me a little. A video would have been debilitating, at least for me.
Of the hundreds of people I exchange email with, about four regularly use encryption. Even amongst people who value privacy, GPG use is rare. It doesn't seem like it should be hard, but it is, and there are some confusing things about it. For example, adding a public key requires closing and restarting the email app for it to work, but there isn't even a popup that notifies about this. Recipe for frustration and rejection.
You mean Democrats, the New GOP, right? A more pro-war, pro-surveillance, pro-wall-street group of assholes could only be found ... nowhere. The difference between the Old GOP and the New GOP can be summed up in total over the issues of abortion and gay marriage. Other than that, the two groups are entirely fungible.
Seriously, Democrats today are to the right of Nixon and do everything he loved to do (war and surveil) and one thing he couldn't do (Nixon Care, conveniently relabeled Obama Care).
So get over yourself -- you're just a blue team neo-con no better than a red team neo-con.
This AC needs modding up. The real problem with a robotic army is that the soldiers are safe and war becomes an easy go-to solution whereas constituents tend to get pissed and fail to re-elect people they think are spilling blood for no reason. Making war cheap, in the shed blood sense, is a very bad idea.
Fair 1) Just another four letter F word. 2) ....
How much would you pay for a copy of Windows 3.1? I'm no Microsoft shill -- I don't even use Windows -- but the people paying for Windows today aren't paying for something that was laid down on a disc 20 years ago. They're paying for ongoing updates, bug fixes, increased functionality, wholly different functionality, etc. etc. That Alanis Morrisette song "Isn't It Ironic" -- it's just as grammatically fucked up as it ever was despite being out there for the last 20 years.
Same with me -- I rarely listen to music while driving these days. I listen to podcasts and audiobooks. I remember as a teen riding around with my Grandpa being annoyed at him listening to AM talk radio rather than playing music. Now I'm doing essentially the same thing, just with better technology.
Radio Lab did an interesting show on Fritz Haber -- his work resulted in commercial fertilizer without which we'd probably have five or six billion fewer people on the planet because you can't mine guano forever at a rate faster than it is replaced, but he also pioneered one of the most gruesome weapons out there. It's a very strange tale.
Radio Lab episode: http://www.radiolab.org/story/...
Commercial fertilizer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H...
Guano: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G...
This is true. When I was a kid in the 80s (teen years), I bought lots of records and CDs. By my late 20s (late 90s), that had dwindled considerably, more so in my 30s, and now that I'm in my late 40s, I basically buy no music. Maybe a song per year on average, if that much. I don't engage in filesharing.
So the $30 or $40 I spend per year on Pandora for an ad free account, which I use probably less than 10 hours per month, is comprised in part of money I would never have given the music industry in the absence of something like Pandora. Note, it isn't that Pandora caused me stop buying music -- I had already stopped more than a decade before I started listening to Pandora. For the music industry, whatever they get out of my Pandora usage should be considered pure gravy that they wouldn't have gotten if Pandora or something like it did not exist.
I have a paid pandora account. After about a month of liking and disliking stuff, the "station" became very good -- now, a year after starting it, I hear a song I don't like maybe once in two hours.
With radio, going off my recollection from the bad old days, I mostly heard ads and music I didn't like and maybe a song or two I wanted to listen to once per hour.
As for the price Pandora is paying, is anyone asking whether Spotify is paying too much? Anyone with a song Pandora is playing has something like 100 years or whatever ridiculous term copyrights last, to milk it. If it gto a million plays per year, that's $100k for one song. $1M for ten songs. A high school graduate can expect to make $1.2M in an entire lifetime: http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/...
I agree with almost all of this, and it seems you have a real interest in protecting the interests of the little guy so to speak, but #16 wholly runs against that grain. If you take out the teeth from civil lawsuits, you empower Ford to never stop making Pintos, or fertilizer manufacturers to blow up as many neighborhoods as they want. This would be a massive form of corporate welfare that would benefit large monied interests and make regular people incapable of striking back in any meaningful manner.