And if the UN stepped in and took half or more of your country away from you because a western country couldn't control the populace, you wouldn't be pissed off? I'd damn well expect my neighboring countries to step up and defend against an annexation.
The Arabs in Palestine were given the right to establish their "own country" beside the Jews. They rejected it. That's hardly Israel's fault.
Privately-owned land registered with the Turkish empire did and still does belong to individual Arabs. But "the land" did not belong to what we now call "the Palestinians", it was held under the British Mandate, captured during WW1 along with all Arab lands once held by the Ottomans. Arab nations were created arbitrarily by the British and French, and handed over to various kings friendly to the crown. There was no collective identity beyond tribal among the Arabs in Palestine (or most elsewhere) at the time, and suggesting there was is a blatant rewriting of history. There was no "country". And there still isn't, because the Palestinians can't get their shit together long enough to create one.
In 1948, Palestinians had no collective claim to the land because they had never tried to claim one. There was no annexation. There was a legal international agreement for the creation of a Jewish state on half the land following decades of Zionist work to secure a place to live in peace.
As for "neighboring countries", they treat the Palestinians worse than Israel does. They initiated the war which created the refugees, who could otherwise have become Israeli citizens. Following that Jordan controlled the West Bank for almost two decades and didn't "return" it to the Palestinians (so, I guess there was an annexation there...), losing it when they invaded Israel yet again in 1967. None, save Jordan, are actually participating in current peace negotiations- using the conflict for suppressing their own populations, but doing nothing to solve the problem they supposedly "care" about. What's really sad is Palestinians don't even know enough to realize who they should be pissed at- their own damn people. Instead, they listen to widely-distributed propaganda like yours.
You misread my meaning, but understandably and raise a good point about the plundering of the fund.
I meant the law requires that I be paid, not that it actually protects the money put into the fund. I know it's shocking but my mother and grandmother are still both receiving full social security benefits (with, one might say, "never a miscommunication"). As will I for a good number of years even if nothing is done to reduce benefits or increase the eligibility age and even should the economy not experience a full recovery.
Alarmists ignore two important facts when they suggest Social Security needs dire and immediate cuts*. First, that the United States will default on treasury bonds, those IOUs you suggested are worthless, unpayable "loans". If that happens, we'll have a much bigger problem than people not getting social security checks. Second, that the baby boomer-caused depletion of the fund is permanent, which it is not. That generation has started to collect and will generally follow a bell curve as their population ages and dies off (end of the boom was 1964, SS is projected as solvent at least until 2040, perhaps 2050, making the very last of the boomers 76, or just under current life expectancy) . The following retiring generation is far less populous and will allow the fund to stabilize. And all the while we're still collecting from the next generation. It's a temporary and manageable crisis, not the "pyramid scheme" politicians will lie to you about so that you get scared into supporting the privatized accounts which their donors desire.
As for the empty treasury please don't blame me. I didn't vote for Bush and his treasury-bankrupting wars and tax cuts, nor did I have a hand in his financial meltdown. I also didn't say I wouldn't share the burden to ensure Social Security survives to serve me- you did. I'm more than happy to discuss adjusting my tax rate upwards if it makes sense, and I've never said there's no such thing an an unreasonable benefit cut.
* if anything, Medicare and Medicaid are the programs which must be addressed, and reform of those, in one way or another, is happening currently; on the other side of the budget pie, defense spending is seeing unprecedented cuts as well.
Just because you listen to bad news sources who focus mostly on people using their favorite buzzword, "Twitter", doesn't mean that's all that was going on. The protests were considerable, as was the brutal suppression of demonstrators, which may well have escalated to the type we're seeing in Libya these days.
I think the problem with the protests in Iran was in large part timing and an overwhelming sense of futility. If it had happened now, following successful uprisings in other Muslim nations, the size of protests and even the outcome may have been far more substantial. I believe it'll happen soon enough. If anyone in the middle-east can overthrow a dictatorship, it's the young, progressive and educated Iranian population.
The way I look at it: If the audience you're looking for is the type who only use Twitter, you' don't have anything interesting to say. Blogs are no different from a website with doesn't go stale thanks to regularly updated content.
People share these same news links on Twitter too, but we're doing it on Slashdot where the substance or length of a post is not restricted to "#mamagrizzly angry! hate #obamacare! grrrr!".
Are people missing out due to how popular these silly "social" tools are? Yeah, but that's their fault and loss, not mine. I use a variety of tools as appropriate for my purpose: email for updating family, Facebook to stay in touch with old college friends, Buzz with my technical friends, and a blog for anything I want publicly accessible and stored long-term.
So go ahead, cut those unemployment benefits and social security
... but when people start feeling entitled to it...
The thing is we are entitled* to these specific benefits. It's not just a matter of morality or fairness, but that we've paid into these trusts our entire working lives and were forced to do so by the same law that ensures we have access to them in time of need.
* assuming we've lost our jobs properly, accumulated SS points and are of appropriate age/disability. And NOBODY is trying to remove these requirements.
As a (gullible) customer, you would be unable to prove that they weren't effective at ridding your house of ghosts, because to refute their claim you would have to prove said failure-to-deghost in a courtroom: i.e. you would have to provide legal evidence of the existence of the ghost that the scammer didn't get rid of.
Not necessarily. You could also make a case by catching them confessing to being con-artists in a leaked email. Actually possible, though unlikely. (Now that I think about it- could you use expert testimony as another method of "proving" they are lying?)
But as you correctly point out- that's only necessary for legal proof it's a scam. For me or you to consider it a scam we don't need such proof, since logic and a little bit of reason prove sufficient reason to hold such a belief. Can I get them thrown into jail or forced to repay their victims? No- but that's not what I was claiming in my earlier post. I'm arguing against the censoring of the submitter's opinion.
Yeah, I didn't bother to waste time RTFS on this one. I mean- it's another Slashdot story about ghosts. I only got this far:
Zothecula sent us a sad story about the gadgetry scammers use to take money from people who believe in the pretend:
I was thinking about all the poor schmucks who "hunt" as a hobby. In addition to those lost souls, considering TFA is about selling to "experts" who have no track record of actually finding a single ghost, selling them ghost-detecting gadgets seemed like the same kind of scam. Now that I checked the "article" it's pretty sad that there's only one "specialty" device in there. I just lost what little shred of respect I had left for the lot of them.
It's assumed, though it is perhaps neither provable nor even true, that such "agencies" are knowingly lying about what they are doing, and thus not actually providing the service being described. As an analogy, take a fake exterminator who just walks around your house spraying compressed air here and there. When the infestation remains you do have a case even if they "seemed" to treat the problem. Claiming you engaged in "commerce" does not free you of legal liability- if you advertised a service, that service must actually be performed.
The question is whether or not they were knowingly lying. The possibility of belief and its protection through law (and the logical impossibility of disproving the existence of ghosts) are the tricky part which allow preachers, psychics, homeopaths and this new breed of scam-artists to continue operating and taking money from those who misplace their trust.
As for your request to stop using the word? I'm protected by the same above principles so I'm personally going to continue using the word "scammer." If one of these scammers wants to try to stop me by claiming libel, they'll most likely have to strip themselves of legal protection in the process. I'm going to go on a limb and suggest the Slashdot crowd generally agrees with my viewpoint, so there was no need for Zothecula to tailor their editorializing to the sentiments of the fringe.
Ghosthunters don't need gadgets. The only thing they need is the desire and ability to separate idiots from their money.
I believe in this case it is the "ghosthunters" who are the idiots being separated from their money (as opposed to the "ghosthunters" on TV separating the viewers from theirs).
Where did I ever say I expect kids to be their only line of defense?
You just did it again. You're saying it's the kid's responsibility to press charges against the bully. That's unrealistic. What is realistic is a proactive approach, whether by schools and/or parents, somebody has to monitor kids for indicative behavior.
Just because a problem exists doesn't give random people or groups authority to interfere in others lives.
More nonsense. Schools are not "random groups"- they have responsibilities towards the children who attend them to provide a safe environment. You make it sound like the principal of G.W. High is abusing his authority by monitoring the kids going to T.A.Edison High. That's an absurd argument, since we're only talking about cases where both the bully and the victim attend G.W. and the source of their interaction is school.
True. But your argument falls apart when you don't happily ignore the fact that children are far less likely to take the necessary legal action to protect themselves (ie telling their parents). And in the cases being addressed, they are actually causing themselves even more harm.
If you want to push for more parental (vs. school) responsibility, that's fine, but you can't reasonably expect the kids to be their own only line of defense until they actually hit adulthood. Even at adulthood we're not doing great at helping our returning vets live through their respective hardships. Emotional traumas aren't solved by ignoring them- they only get worse and lay persons are woefully inadequate at addressing them.
I agree with you when it comes to young kids where the label "petty shit" applies, but that's not the purpose of this action. What this is meant to address is the rising number of suicides by teens who are being persistently stalked and bullied beyond their ability to "roll it off". We're talking actual abuse here- intentional long-term malice which would result in criminal charges or restraining orders for adults. It may not be an ideal solution (educating kids to handle being picked on is probably more acceptable/constitutional in theory), but kids are dying and parents are right to be concerned about theirs, and schools are already strapped for cash without having to worry about lawsuits.
People need the ability to install freeware, shareware, commercial, their friends apps or their own apps and so on.
Oh please- you've been able to do that for years in package managers. It's easy to add software to a repository list giving you the ability to install a package your distro doesn't provide for whatever reason. Some software gets bundled in executables which work just like in Windows (e.g. America's Army).
Security-wise, the useful difference is that this process is not as ingrained in a brain-dead way that you routinely download an exe you shouldn't be trusting and reflexively click "Next" five times. The problem is that in Windows there is no such thing as a trustworthy package (nobody even bothers with signing their applications). And now that Windows users have finally moved a tiny step away from running as root, they've been retrained to routinely click the "you need sudo? yes- use it already, stop asking me every minute!" button. It's not users' fault that Microsoft discourages them from thinking about security because it feels like more trouble than it's worth. My mother is still working up her confidence in dealing with phishing, and she's just now starting to trust herself to the point where she doesn't need to forward the email to me for a second opinion. The last thing I need is to hear about every confirmation window that pops up.
By contrast, in a Linux packaging system I'm very aware that I'm choosing to install software that nobody has vetted. And since deb/rpm/etc are open formats I can easily do my own checking (or get someone else with know-how) to see which files are being installed where they can cause harm. Have fun doing that with an Installshield executable.
Well put. TFA has all the hallmarks of made-for-television "science."
Doing just a tiny bit of digging I wonder if Prof. Freund is actually a crackpot, or if he just looks like it by his association with mass-media.
There's a little more information about this show to be found in a Harvard article advertising the screening they had last week. Probably not enough to convince any skeptics, but it is more substantial than just saying he's got an intriguing satellite photo the way TFA does. I don't think those two stone figurines in the photo of him are very impressive, and certainly not indicative of the advanced civilization Atlantis was supposed to be.
He has also been featured on NOVA several years ago in another very unlikely and controversial finding. That one was actually in his field of expertise, Judaic history, but the transcript suggests that very little humility is observed in reaching his conclusions. Now this could all just be due to editing, an unfortunate choices of words captured on film, and the need for ratings. And perhaps he's put himself in a position where he can't say something like "no, that's misleading- don't use that title for the show." At the moment I doubt that all of these are the case.
Until I can watch the show to see more information, I find it concerning how he keeps running into these very improbable "finds" and how this new one isn't even in his primary field. I'll be counting the number of weasel words appearing in the show. How many per minute constitutes pseudoscience? My second question is this- obviously a NatGeo show does nothing to improve the credibility of one's work in professional circles, but is cooperating with mass-media to secure funding (esp. in a day where it's hard to come) for actual archaeology work wrong, and should it hinder one's credibility to use such funding?
Really ? That's like saying every time someone steals an Escort, Ford has failed.
That's idiotic even for a car analogy.
It's more like we suddenly see thousands of accidents due to people recharging their new iPad 2. Ford's not responsible for protecting your property, only for making it function properly.
Just because something is an opinion does not make it impervious to being factually incorrect. The viewpoint that women (or $yourrace) are less mentally capable than ($myrace) men was a generally accepted opinion. That opinion has been disproved in countless instances, as well as being proven morally wrong to all but the most retarded cultures. Opinions are not inconsequential or harmless when they influence reality as was the often the terrible case in this example- there's no place for "merely". We're not talking about whether chocolate or vanilla is the better ice-cream.
But this ignores the fact that Libraries are not and have never been (since their separation from simple archives), as c6502 premised above, just "storage". That statement is also a reversal of his earlier premises which admit that this one is overly simplistic by listing other activities of libraries. And since you cannot currently truly replace what libraries provide using "the web", they are quite obviously not yet obsolete, so yes such an opinion is wrong. You could argue about partial obsolescence or ways of improving libraries, but that's not what the prick is doing.
The range of answer types are not very different from stackoverflow.com, since both are unpaid and unverified by anyone other than random Internet people who happen to stumble upon that specific thread. It often depends on the "experts" who are answering the question. Some experts are "good" and write original code, or copy from their own personal code base. Some will link you to an existing answer (either in EE or on the web). Some are "evil" and will outright copy information someone else posted without a reference or acknowledgement.
No, it's not simple scraping the way many sites just copy information from Wikipedia to gain page views. The terms of use(see 4.E.xi) prohibit improper copying. The right question to ask is whether or not such violations are policed/ignored/encouraged. I have no answer for that question.
Oh, poor baby. Your opinion was criticized. As were you for blindly agreeing with a sarcastic comment in your need to feel like you're not the only schmuck sharing that opinion. Let's all have a great big cry-fest and apologize for your hurt feelings.
Fact of the matter is your opinion is wrong. Yes you're entitled to state it. "PC" my ass. I explained how it's wrong several days ago. You didn't care to respond, which you're also entitled to do. Now you're back here again repeating the "libraries are obsolete" nonsense, despite it being shown to be a useless point of view which you don't bother to actually discuss. That's still legal, but it doesn't make you any less of a nuisance to this community than the common troll.
So yeah, I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this but, these posts of yours are useless. You don't have to censor yourself- just say something interesting on the subject for a change.
Yeah, we saw your stupid opinion on libraries last time. It was as worthless as this one where you agreed with a sarcastic comment. Way to go, dumbass.
Bottom line I simply see nothing a library (or blockbuster) offers that can not be found in my ten-room home That's why I stopped going to the library or blockbuster.
FTFY. You'd be shocked to learn how many Americans still don't have Internet at home, nor credit cards (or even bank accounts) to use on Amazon, nor basements and bedrooms with "fat recliners", nor can afford to buy every book they would pick up in a library. While you may like to imagine you're "normal", there are far more people living in one-room apartments with thin walls and loud neighbors. Your unsolicited individual habits are irrelevant and nothing you've "simply" said really matters in the discussion because it's based on a misunderstanding what the real, larger world is like. Fact of the matter is libraries are a necessary public service in much of the United States.
Beside costs, there are qualitative issues at hand as well. Audible and author websites are not equivalent. They don't let you interact with the author and provide a a static and one-dimensional listening experience compared to live, interactive and actually-interesting readings (you've never actually attended a decent one, right?). Facebook? Why would I want to subscribe to a feed telling me in which far-away city an author is appearing each weekend to sell their current book? I want to talk to them about their craft- not their bus tour. Suggesting teachers are tutors suggests you understand the role of neither. In addition to that, substituting child programs with computer games tells us you're either not a parent, or a really crappy one.
I'm guessing you use Slashdot to check "social life" off your list too. How sad. There's a big world to experience out, and it's very obvious you're not getting enough of it through your monitor. No amount of money is too much to prevent more kids from growing up like that.
Not a bad idea for a day but I'd suggest we're probably best off by agreeing on advocating just one day of constant celebration and focus our energy on that one, and I think Pi day is more likely to happen.
Why Pi? It's simpler to grasp as a mathematical concept (remember- we're talking about lawyers here...), and it's taught at a rather early grade in geometry so we can use it to advance math and science education.
You're right- it's not very newsworthy. But you're halfway to a possible answer. The other half is because to geeks the seizing of one's comics stash might seem cruel.
Add in some good old Slashdot libertarianism and you've got a bit of constitutional humor.
Slashdot Mirror
And if the UN stepped in and took half or more of your country away from you because a western country couldn't control the populace, you wouldn't be pissed off? I'd damn well expect my neighboring countries to step up and defend against an annexation.
The Arabs in Palestine were given the right to establish their "own country" beside the Jews. They rejected it. That's hardly Israel's fault.
Privately-owned land registered with the Turkish empire did and still does belong to individual Arabs. But "the land" did not belong to what we now call "the Palestinians", it was held under the British Mandate, captured during WW1 along with all Arab lands once held by the Ottomans. Arab nations were created arbitrarily by the British and French, and handed over to various kings friendly to the crown. There was no collective identity beyond tribal among the Arabs in Palestine (or most elsewhere) at the time, and suggesting there was is a blatant rewriting of history. There was no "country". And there still isn't, because the Palestinians can't get their shit together long enough to create one.
In 1948, Palestinians had no collective claim to the land because they had never tried to claim one. There was no annexation. There was a legal international agreement for the creation of a Jewish state on half the land following decades of Zionist work to secure a place to live in peace.
As for "neighboring countries", they treat the Palestinians worse than Israel does. They initiated the war which created the refugees, who could otherwise have become Israeli citizens. Following that Jordan controlled the West Bank for almost two decades and didn't "return" it to the Palestinians (so, I guess there was an annexation there...), losing it when they invaded Israel yet again in 1967. None, save Jordan, are actually participating in current peace negotiations- using the conflict for suppressing their own populations, but doing nothing to solve the problem they supposedly "care" about. What's really sad is Palestinians don't even know enough to realize who they should be pissed at- their own damn people. Instead, they listen to widely-distributed propaganda like yours.
You misread my meaning, but understandably and raise a good point about the plundering of the fund.
I meant the law requires that I be paid, not that it actually protects the money put into the fund. I know it's shocking but my mother and grandmother are still both receiving full social security benefits (with, one might say, "never a miscommunication"). As will I for a good number of years even if nothing is done to reduce benefits or increase the eligibility age and even should the economy not experience a full recovery.
Alarmists ignore two important facts when they suggest Social Security needs dire and immediate cuts*. First, that the United States will default on treasury bonds, those IOUs you suggested are worthless, unpayable "loans". If that happens, we'll have a much bigger problem than people not getting social security checks. Second, that the baby boomer-caused depletion of the fund is permanent, which it is not. That generation has started to collect and will generally follow a bell curve as their population ages and dies off (end of the boom was 1964, SS is projected as solvent at least until 2040, perhaps 2050, making the very last of the boomers 76, or just under current life expectancy) . The following retiring generation is far less populous and will allow the fund to stabilize. And all the while we're still collecting from the next generation. It's a temporary and manageable crisis, not the "pyramid scheme" politicians will lie to you about so that you get scared into supporting the privatized accounts which their donors desire.
As for the empty treasury please don't blame me. I didn't vote for Bush and his treasury-bankrupting wars and tax cuts, nor did I have a hand in his financial meltdown. I also didn't say I wouldn't share the burden to ensure Social Security survives to serve me- you did. I'm more than happy to discuss adjusting my tax rate upwards if it makes sense, and I've never said there's no such thing an an unreasonable benefit cut.
* if anything, Medicare and Medicaid are the programs which must be addressed, and reform of those, in one way or another, is happening currently; on the other side of the budget pie, defense spending is seeing unprecedented cuts as well.
You mean like in this photo?
Just because you listen to bad news sources who focus mostly on people using their favorite buzzword, "Twitter", doesn't mean that's all that was going on. The protests were considerable, as was the brutal suppression of demonstrators, which may well have escalated to the type we're seeing in Libya these days.
I think the problem with the protests in Iran was in large part timing and an overwhelming sense of futility. If it had happened now, following successful uprisings in other Muslim nations, the size of protests and even the outcome may have been far more substantial. I believe it'll happen soon enough. If anyone in the middle-east can overthrow a dictatorship, it's the young, progressive and educated Iranian population.
The way I look at it: If the audience you're looking for is the type who only use Twitter, you' don't have anything interesting to say. Blogs are no different from a website with doesn't go stale thanks to regularly updated content.
People share these same news links on Twitter too, but we're doing it on Slashdot where the substance or length of a post is not restricted to "#mamagrizzly angry! hate #obamacare! grrrr!".
Are people missing out due to how popular these silly "social" tools are? Yeah, but that's their fault and loss, not mine. I use a variety of tools as appropriate for my purpose: email for updating family, Facebook to stay in touch with old college friends, Buzz with my technical friends, and a blog for anything I want publicly accessible and stored long-term.
So go ahead, cut those unemployment benefits and social security
... but when people start feeling entitled to it ...
The thing is we are entitled* to these specific benefits. It's not just a matter of morality or fairness, but that we've paid into these trusts our entire working lives and were forced to do so by the same law that ensures we have access to them in time of need.
* assuming we've lost our jobs properly, accumulated SS points and are of appropriate age/disability. And NOBODY is trying to remove these requirements.
As a (gullible) customer, you would be unable to prove that they weren't effective at ridding your house of ghosts, because to refute their claim you would have to prove said failure-to-deghost in a courtroom: i.e. you would have to provide legal evidence of the existence of the ghost that the scammer didn't get rid of.
Not necessarily. You could also make a case by catching them confessing to being con-artists in a leaked email. Actually possible, though unlikely. (Now that I think about it- could you use expert testimony as another method of "proving" they are lying?)
But as you correctly point out- that's only necessary for legal proof it's a scam. For me or you to consider it a scam we don't need such proof, since logic and a little bit of reason prove sufficient reason to hold such a belief. Can I get them thrown into jail or forced to repay their victims? No- but that's not what I was claiming in my earlier post. I'm arguing against the censoring of the submitter's opinion.
If you want overhyping, watch Nancy Grace
Yeah, I didn't bother to waste time RTFS on this one. I mean- it's another Slashdot story about ghosts. I only got this far:
Zothecula sent us a sad story about the gadgetry scammers use to take money from people who believe in the pretend:
I was thinking about all the poor schmucks who "hunt" as a hobby. In addition to those lost souls, considering TFA is about selling to "experts" who have no track record of actually finding a single ghost, selling them ghost-detecting gadgets seemed like the same kind of scam. Now that I checked the "article" it's pretty sad that there's only one "specialty" device in there. I just lost what little shred of respect I had left for the lot of them.
It's assumed, though it is perhaps neither provable nor even true, that such "agencies" are knowingly lying about what they are doing, and thus not actually providing the service being described. As an analogy, take a fake exterminator who just walks around your house spraying compressed air here and there. When the infestation remains you do have a case even if they "seemed" to treat the problem. Claiming you engaged in "commerce" does not free you of legal liability- if you advertised a service, that service must actually be performed.
The question is whether or not they were knowingly lying. The possibility of belief and its protection through law (and the logical impossibility of disproving the existence of ghosts) are the tricky part which allow preachers, psychics, homeopaths and this new breed of scam-artists to continue operating and taking money from those who misplace their trust.
As for your request to stop using the word? I'm protected by the same above principles so I'm personally going to continue using the word "scammer." If one of these scammers wants to try to stop me by claiming libel, they'll most likely have to strip themselves of legal protection in the process. I'm going to go on a limb and suggest the Slashdot crowd generally agrees with my viewpoint, so there was no need for Zothecula to tailor their editorializing to the sentiments of the fringe.
Ghosthunters don't need gadgets. The only thing they need is the desire and ability to separate idiots from their money.
I believe in this case it is the "ghosthunters" who are the idiots being separated from their money (as opposed to the "ghosthunters" on TV separating the viewers from theirs).
Where did I ever say I expect kids to be their only line of defense?
You just did it again. You're saying it's the kid's responsibility to press charges against the bully. That's unrealistic. What is realistic is a proactive approach, whether by schools and/or parents, somebody has to monitor kids for indicative behavior.
Just because a problem exists doesn't give random people or groups authority to interfere in others lives.
More nonsense. Schools are not "random groups"- they have responsibilities towards the children who attend them to provide a safe environment. You make it sound like the principal of G.W. High is abusing his authority by monitoring the kids going to T.A.Edison High. That's an absurd argument, since we're only talking about cases where both the bully and the victim attend G.W. and the source of their interaction is school.
True. But your argument falls apart when you don't happily ignore the fact that children are far less likely to take the necessary legal action to protect themselves (ie telling their parents). And in the cases being addressed, they are actually causing themselves even more harm.
If you want to push for more parental (vs. school) responsibility, that's fine, but you can't reasonably expect the kids to be their own only line of defense until they actually hit adulthood. Even at adulthood we're not doing great at helping our returning vets live through their respective hardships. Emotional traumas aren't solved by ignoring them- they only get worse and lay persons are woefully inadequate at addressing them.
You read too many "Christian" websites. If you want facts, you need to find other sources of information.
I agree with you when it comes to young kids where the label "petty shit" applies, but that's not the purpose of this action. What this is meant to address is the rising number of suicides by teens who are being persistently stalked and bullied beyond their ability to "roll it off". We're talking actual abuse here- intentional long-term malice which would result in criminal charges or restraining orders for adults. It may not be an ideal solution (educating kids to handle being picked on is probably more acceptable/constitutional in theory), but kids are dying and parents are right to be concerned about theirs, and schools are already strapped for cash without having to worry about lawsuits.
People need the ability to install freeware, shareware, commercial, their friends apps or their own apps and so on.
Oh please- you've been able to do that for years in package managers. It's easy to add software to a repository list giving you the ability to install a package your distro doesn't provide for whatever reason. Some software gets bundled in executables which work just like in Windows (e.g. America's Army).
Security-wise, the useful difference is that this process is not as ingrained in a brain-dead way that you routinely download an exe you shouldn't be trusting and reflexively click "Next" five times. The problem is that in Windows there is no such thing as a trustworthy package (nobody even bothers with signing their applications). And now that Windows users have finally moved a tiny step away from running as root, they've been retrained to routinely click the "you need sudo? yes- use it already, stop asking me every minute!" button. It's not users' fault that Microsoft discourages them from thinking about security because it feels like more trouble than it's worth. My mother is still working up her confidence in dealing with phishing, and she's just now starting to trust herself to the point where she doesn't need to forward the email to me for a second opinion. The last thing I need is to hear about every confirmation window that pops up.
By contrast, in a Linux packaging system I'm very aware that I'm choosing to install software that nobody has vetted. And since deb/rpm/etc are open formats I can easily do my own checking (or get someone else with know-how) to see which files are being installed where they can cause harm. Have fun doing that with an Installshield executable.
Well put. TFA has all the hallmarks of made-for-television "science."
Doing just a tiny bit of digging I wonder if Prof. Freund is actually a crackpot, or if he just looks like it by his association with mass-media.
There's a little more information about this show to be found in a Harvard article advertising the screening they had last week. Probably not enough to convince any skeptics, but it is more substantial than just saying he's got an intriguing satellite photo the way TFA does. I don't think those two stone figurines in the photo of him are very impressive, and certainly not indicative of the advanced civilization Atlantis was supposed to be.
He has also been featured on NOVA several years ago in another very unlikely and controversial finding. That one was actually in his field of expertise, Judaic history, but the transcript suggests that very little humility is observed in reaching his conclusions. Now this could all just be due to editing, an unfortunate choices of words captured on film, and the need for ratings. And perhaps he's put himself in a position where he can't say something like "no, that's misleading- don't use that title for the show." At the moment I doubt that all of these are the case.
Until I can watch the show to see more information, I find it concerning how he keeps running into these very improbable "finds" and how this new one isn't even in his primary field. I'll be counting the number of weasel words appearing in the show. How many per minute constitutes pseudoscience? My second question is this- obviously a NatGeo show does nothing to improve the credibility of one's work in professional circles, but is cooperating with mass-media to secure funding (esp. in a day where it's hard to come) for actual archaeology work wrong, and should it hinder one's credibility to use such funding?
Really ? That's like saying every time someone steals an Escort, Ford has failed.
That's idiotic even for a car analogy.
It's more like we suddenly see thousands of accidents due to people recharging their new iPad 2. Ford's not responsible for protecting your property, only for making it function properly.
Just because something is an opinion does not make it impervious to being factually incorrect. The viewpoint that women (or $yourrace) are less mentally capable than ($myrace) men was a generally accepted opinion. That opinion has been disproved in countless instances, as well as being proven morally wrong to all but the most retarded cultures. Opinions are not inconsequential or harmless when they influence reality as was the often the terrible case in this example- there's no place for "merely". We're not talking about whether chocolate or vanilla is the better ice-cream.
But this ignores the fact that Libraries are not and have never been (since their separation from simple archives), as c6502 premised above, just "storage". That statement is also a reversal of his earlier premises which admit that this one is overly simplistic by listing other activities of libraries. And since you cannot currently truly replace what libraries provide using "the web", they are quite obviously not yet obsolete, so yes such an opinion is wrong. You could argue about partial obsolescence or ways of improving libraries, but that's not what the prick is doing.
The range of answer types are not very different from stackoverflow.com, since both are unpaid and unverified by anyone other than random Internet people who happen to stumble upon that specific thread. It often depends on the "experts" who are answering the question. Some experts are "good" and write original code, or copy from their own personal code base. Some will link you to an existing answer (either in EE or on the web). Some are "evil" and will outright copy information someone else posted without a reference or acknowledgement.
No, it's not simple scraping the way many sites just copy information from Wikipedia to gain page views. The terms of use(see 4.E.xi) prohibit improper copying. The right question to ask is whether or not such violations are policed/ignored/encouraged. I have no answer for that question.
Oh, poor baby. Your opinion was criticized. As were you for blindly agreeing with a sarcastic comment in your need to feel like you're not the only schmuck sharing that opinion. Let's all have a great big cry-fest and apologize for your hurt feelings.
Fact of the matter is your opinion is wrong. Yes you're entitled to state it.
"PC" my ass. I explained how it's wrong several days ago. You didn't care to respond, which you're also entitled to do.
Now you're back here again repeating the "libraries are obsolete" nonsense, despite it being shown to be a useless point of view which you don't bother to actually discuss. That's still legal, but it doesn't make you any less of a nuisance to this community than the common troll.
So yeah, I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this but, these posts of yours are useless. You don't have to censor yourself- just say something interesting on the subject for a change.
Yeah, we saw your stupid opinion on libraries last time. It was as worthless as this one where you agreed with a sarcastic comment. Way to go, dumbass.
Bottom line I simply see nothing a library (or blockbuster) offers that can not be found in my ten-room home That's why I stopped going to the library or blockbuster.
FTFY. You'd be shocked to learn how many Americans still don't have Internet at home, nor credit cards (or even bank accounts) to use on Amazon, nor basements and bedrooms with "fat recliners", nor can afford to buy every book they would pick up in a library. While you may like to imagine you're "normal", there are far more people living in one-room apartments with thin walls and loud neighbors. Your unsolicited individual habits are irrelevant and nothing you've "simply" said really matters in the discussion because it's based on a misunderstanding what the real, larger world is like. Fact of the matter is libraries are a necessary public service in much of the United States.
Beside costs, there are qualitative issues at hand as well. Audible and author websites are not equivalent. They don't let you interact with the author and provide a a static and one-dimensional listening experience compared to live, interactive and actually-interesting readings (you've never actually attended a decent one, right?). Facebook? Why would I want to subscribe to a feed telling me in which far-away city an author is appearing each weekend to sell their current book? I want to talk to them about their craft- not their bus tour. Suggesting teachers are tutors suggests you understand the role of neither. In addition to that, substituting child programs with computer games tells us you're either not a parent, or a really crappy one.
I'm guessing you use Slashdot to check "social life" off your list too. How sad. There's a big world to experience out, and it's very obvious you're not getting enough of it through your monitor. No amount of money is too much to prevent more kids from growing up like that.
Not a bad idea for a day but I'd suggest we're probably best off by agreeing on advocating just one day of constant celebration and focus our energy on that one, and I think Pi day is more likely to happen.
Why Pi? It's simpler to grasp as a mathematical concept (remember- we're talking about lawyers here...), and it's taught at a rather early grade in geometry so we can use it to advance math and science education.
But it's not the same as when she does it...
"Boy oh boy Mom, you sure know how to hydrate a pizza".
You're right- it's not very newsworthy. But you're halfway to a possible answer. The other half is because to geeks the seizing of one's comics stash might seem cruel.
Add in some good old Slashdot libertarianism and you've got a bit of constitutional humor.