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User: macraig

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  1. Actual dialog or just another video? on Ask David Saltzberg About Being The Big Bang Theory's Science Advisor · · Score: 0

    Ask David Saltzberg About Being The Big Bang Theory's Science Advisor

    So will the result be that there's no actual dialog, no direct responses from Saltzberg to questions that people took the time to pose, and just another talking-head video like we first had with Lawrence Lessig? Or will it respect the cooperative process of the traditional Q&A posts where the subject is actually engaged?

  2. Re:"Moderation?" Don't you mean "Censorship?" on Study: Social Networks Have Negative Effect On Individual Welfare · · Score: 1

    Maybe they meant self-moderation?

  3. Re:"Moderation?" Don't you mean "Censorship?" on Study: Social Networks Have Negative Effect On Individual Welfare · · Score: 1

    There's also this dying art called self-moderation that would make forced moderation or censorship unnecessary. Too much to ask that humans rediscover that ethic, I guess.

  4. Outsourcing is Darwinian on Dramatic Shifts In Manufacturing Costs Are Driving Companies To US, Mexico · · Score: 1

    This is the inevitable consequence of outsourcing. We've altered the local economies of those countries and the sucking sound is reduced, and so now the "outsourcing" will flow where the vacuum is now strongest... which perhaps just happens to be right here in our own back yards again.

    What goes around comes around. Or something like that.

  5. Looks familiar on Quiet Cooling With a Copper Foam Heatsink · · Score: 1

    Their copper "foam" reminds me strongly of the brass "sponge" that I use to clean the tips of my soldering irons. I wonder if there's a DIY cooling project I've been missing?

  6. Communism is dysfunctional socialism on Experiment Shows People Exposed To East German Socialism Cheat More · · Score: 1

    Can we please stop letting dogmatic capitalists distort the conversation about the relative value of socialism?

  7. Now if only... on After NSA Spying Flap, Germany Asks CIA Station Chief to Depart · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ... we in the USA could also tell the CIA to GTFO.

  8. Nothing hurts worse than these synthetic bee stings.

  9. Re:Didn't answer anyone's questions directly, did on Lawrence Lessig Answers Your Questions About His Mayday PAC, Part 2 (Video) · · Score: 1

    And once again the minority voice - you and I and perhaps two other people - will get buried under a mountain of dogma and apathy. Nothing will change with Slashdot for the better (common good), which is the result Lessig should expect from all his efforts attacking symptoms rather than the "root" causes. "RootStrikers" is a misnomer and Lessig a fragment of the problem rather than a solution incarnate.

  10. Re:Didn't answer anyone's questions directly, did on Lawrence Lessig Answers Your Questions About His Mayday PAC, Part 2 (Video) · · Score: 1

    I was speaking in general, you nutter! Of course I noticed the transcript in this instance. None of which is relevant to my original rant.

  11. Re:Didn't answer anyone's questions directly, did on Lawrence Lessig Answers Your Questions About His Mayday PAC, Part 2 (Video) · · Score: 2

    Ditto. Textual information trapped in a linear non-searchable video has always pissed me off. It serves the interests of the talking head and his masters more than it does my interest of having maximal access to information. Talking-head videos are a means of controlling and limiting access to information. But I digress and was trying to stay focused in my rant....

  12. Didn't answer anyone's questions directly, did he? on Lawrence Lessig Answers Your Questions About His Mayday PAC, Part 2 (Video) · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Was this more of the new-and-improved Slashdot we can expect in the future? Historically these answers-your-questions posts were just that, direct responses from the interviewee to users who asked questions. What did we get here? A video chat with very generalized non-specific answers and primarily just an opportunity for Lessig to promote his cause and himself. It was one big spammy two-part advertisement, essentially.

    Could you be any more disingenuous, Slashdot and Dice? Forget the silly mutinous talk over the Beta redesign; this is behavior deserving of a pitchfork-wielding geek mob.

  13. Wow, what a misdirection. Thanks, Slashdot. on Lawrence Lessig Answers Your Questions About His Mayday PAC (Video) · · Score: 1

    The title of this post was, "Lawrence Lessig Answers Your Questions...", but what we got in response was a trendy video interview with generalized responses, not the promised (or at least implied by past history) direct responses.

    Is this all we can expect from this sort of post in the future? One more nail in Slashdot's coffin.

  14. Re:And yet... on Robert McMillen: What Everyone Gets Wrong In the Debate Over Net Neutrality · · Score: 1

    I did read to the end of the article. I did read what you quoted. It is not a restatement of my proposal, not even an ambiguous one. "Back in the 1990s" every mile of copper was privately owned by either the telecom that built it or a bigger Borg that assimilated it.

    He's still talking about legislation and rule-making as a poor attempt to resolve the problem. It hasn't worked before, ever, and it won't work now.

  15. ... McMillen gets it wrong, too.

    Net neutrality isn't achieved through regulation at all. It's achieved by public ownership of the physical infrastructure and demoting the ISPs and even backbone providers to contractor status serving the common good. What would happen if American roads and highways weren't for the most part publicly owned and instead were all toll roads privately owned by the construction companies that laid them? Who would benefit from that situation, do you suppose?

  16. Chasing symptoms and not the real problem? on Interviews: Ask Lawrence Lessig About His Mayday PAC · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Mr. Lessig:

    Have you read Crispin Sartwell's article in the latest June issue of The Atlantic? Mr. Sartwell seems to make arguments that imply that efforts such as that of RootStrikers and the Mayday PAC are merely nibbling at the edges of the true problem and not addressing it directly. If the hierarchies of wealth concentration and governance are inextricably linked through a Principle of Hierarchical Coincidence, then will you unlink them merely by legislating campaign finance reforms? For that matter, would even a round of revolutionary head-chopping do the job when so many other heads have been groomed and eagerly await the same chance at dominance?

  17. Re:TX Law on Mad Cow Disease Blamed For Patient's Death In Texas · · Score: 2

    It ain't India, that's for sure. Can't disparage it but you can damned straight slaughter it and serve it up with a dash of A-1.

  18. Revolving doors on FTC Lobbies To Be Top Cop For Geolocation · · Score: 2

    Since these "commissions" like the FTC, FDA, and FCC have even more obvious problems with revolving doors then even the DoJ does, I doubt it would be a good idea at all to hand this off to the likes of an FTC staffed by former Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and telecom execs.

  19. Re:Who needs brakes? on The Brakes That Stop a 1,000 MPH Bloodhound SSC · · Score: 1

    So you saw what I did there.

  20. Who needs brakes? on The Brakes That Stop a 1,000 MPH Bloodhound SSC · · Score: 4, Funny

    Why not just skip the brakes, save the money, and eject the driver/pilot and let the sucker crash and burn? Could be an awesomely popular YouTube video.

  21. Very poorly written article on How the USPS Killed Digital Mail · · Score: 1

    I knew of Derek Khanna, but didn't know that his skill wielding English was so deficient; if that is now his day job, he should most definitely quit. That was the most poorly written article I've seen at a journalistic Web site in many years.

  22. Been saying this for YEARS here (and everywhere) on To Save the Internet We Need To Own the Means of Distribution · · Score: 1

    It pisses me off that I've been arguing for this same genuine network neutrality here for years and yet this latecomer to the idea gets front-page attention. Still, maybe you'll listen now and start the literal revolution that will be required to wrest the wires from the grasp of corporate overlords? The FCC is staffed by cowards and revolving-door shills who won't even suggest it much less help make it happen.

  23. Re:rotfl They want to outlaw themselves!?!? on F.C.C., In Net Neutrality Turnaround, Plans To Allow Fast Lane · · Score: 1

    You don't think labor unions exploit their membership to enrich those in control of them, thus giving them a reason to survive even when there's no actual labor abuses to be solved? The enrichment of labor bosses is old news, and their frequent manufacture of problems to then "solve" is also not a shocker. Unions should be event-driven, not continuously polling. The fact that they're the latter at all is because the people controlling them saw selfish opportunities.

    I'm a badge-carrying socialist, but abusive labor union hierarchies are just as sickening as abusive corporate hierarchies. They're one and the same, both controlled by sociopathic scum risen to the top of the pond.

  24. Re:rotfl They want to outlaw themselves!?!? on F.C.C., In Net Neutrality Turnaround, Plans To Allow Fast Lane · · Score: 1

    ... but they've accomplished their goal, so they're fine with being disbanded.

    That worked so well with labor unions, didn't it? Now they're like parasites with a survival instinct of their own. What makes you think this instance will be any different?

  25. Boozer backpackers on The Science Behind Powdered Alcohol · · Score: 4, Funny

    What a boon for boozer backpackers: all the buzz but a tenth of the weight!