>Soon theyâ(TM)ll be ditching the Feel the Bern shirts and voting Republican.
"If you're a conservative before 25 you have no heart. If you're liberal after 35 you have no brain."
It's too old, and there are too many variants to attribute that quote correctly. I think it's a false dichotomy anyway; there are a LOT of social issues on which you might have opinions, and it seems extremely unlikely they're all going to fall into the same camp (whichever it may be).
I'm not particularly keen on the left OR right sides of modern Western politics, as both will put ideology over reality at the drop of a hat.
As a general rule (an unresearched, unscientific gut-feeling kind of rule!), people do seem to get more conservative as they age. I think it's fear - fear of losing what they have accrued, fear of a lifetime of experience becoming less relevant as they age, and an unwillingness to re-examine things they think they got figured out decades prior.
2) Get a lift to a place where boats are likely to approach from a great distance (I live near Lake Ontario, so this is easy for me).
3) Use binoculars to note that you see the tops of distant boats first, not the whole thing only smaller.
4) Use your brain to recognize this is in perfect accordance with a curved Earth.
Alternatively, with a bit more brain effort, you get a couple of balls, a couple of cardboard disks and a flashlight, and go into a dark room to compare what happens when you cast shadows from one object onto another, then compare that to the phases of the Moon.
If none of that is sufficiently compelling, there's always the 'plastic bag over the head, duct taped around the neck' experiment. It won't tell you the Earth is round, but it WILL be an interesting experiment in eugenics.
>While it will eventually result in higher-density housing being built in some of the affected areas, eventually improving rental pricing,
Human societies are similar to forests in this aspect - occasionally we need a fire (or other disaster, like a big war) to wreak some destruction so in the long run we remain healthy.
In the case of humans, we invest in infrastructure and then as long as we have a choice, are extremely hesitant to tear it down and rebuild with something better. Even if we see other, newer places, are leaving us behind.
Burn it down and that option is no longer viable, so we move forward.
[quoteblock]The summary itself states the reason for the guideline is to make passage of legislation easier to get past Republicans in congress.... The idiots on the left and the right will believe just about anything if it makes the other side look evil.[/quoteblock]
So you're saying that if this isn't an attempt at suppressing phrases by Republicans, but instead a suggestion (presumably from non-Republicans) to avoid using those words because they're going to trigger a predictable response from enough Republicans to be a problem... yeah, evil Republicans.
Either way, the Republicans are definitely the bad guys in this case.
But "community standards", your religious viewpoints, or any other fantasies you believe in this week can indeed affect reality, since a good portion of our human-scale reality is political.
For instance, any social issue where a solid statistical analysis shows that you can reduce a problem with something that goes against people's gut feelings. Abortion and birth control access would be the first two I'd suspect the right would go after. Crime and punishment would be a close second. In both cases we have good evidence that the emotional response is counterproductive to a happier society, and the people having the strongest emotional responses... don't care.
Now you have a government that is saying it doesn't either.
IIRC, there was also a commercial system for an IR LED-based WLAN for offices that couldn't run data cabling for some reason... I never heard of it ever being deployed, though.
If letting the Chinese spy on me gets me a phone at half the local cost, I'm OK with that.
Once I have an always-on, location-aware device on my person, somebody's tracking it. The Chinese are less likely to do anything with whatever information they gather on me, AND they're not in the same country. Or on the same continent.
Then there's the fact that the particular phone I have has been torn down, and the software disassembled by 'reputable hackers'... and only the usual adware crap was found, which you can uninstall.
Better than Apple, since I can do with my phone whatever the hardware allows and the manufacturer won't even TRY to stop me.
I have a simple rule - if Trump says it, it's probably self-serving bullshit that his supporters will accept as gospel. Surprisingly, sometimes he gets things right anyway, but I still wouldn't trust him to tell me the time of day.
And the voice processing should be local, too. No traffic should leave your LAN unless it's critical to the function it serves... which should be what YOU want, not what some tech company wants.
It'll happen (if it hasn't already). There will be a FOSS project at some point and you'll be able to install your own system that isn't owned by a megacorp. And you know what? As a percentage of the market I doubt anyone will use it because they'll be happy with their Google Home or Amazon Alexa.
>(A properly placed pigeon, blocking the receive aperture, is equivalent to 10-30dB of path loss... since I know you were wondering
I've worked with microwave systems. A flock of birds could cause the system to fail over to a redundant path.
I could also watch weather fronts move through the region as signal quality dropped then (usually) recovered.
We never had problems with pigeons roosting, though. First, the antennas had covers over them, but second... anything that could manage to cling to those would probably be cooked to death and fall before I could get a tower crew out to clear the obstruction.
Now, rural ya-hoos taking pot shots at the antennas? Problem.
First... 'light beam'? Let me suggest first that they should have said something like 'laser signalling without fibre optic cables'. I dunno, maybe I'm crazy.
Second, it'd be interesting to know what kind of laser - specifically, the particular window of EM they're utilizing. That will have a huge effect on what kind of atmospheric conditions it can tolerate, and how far it's good for. I've gone three links in and still can't find any mention of what frequency range they're talking about. And details on any automatic aim-adjustment tech would be awesome.
Third - and I know I'm probably a weirdo here - I wonder if anyone considered non-collimated light for broadcast? You might think of that as 'radio', but assuming we're talking near-visible spectrum it's a bit different.
In short, this press release has insufficient data to generate meaningful discussion.
>The dossier was NOT "first commissioned by Republicans". Christopher Steele was not hired by Fusion GPS until AFTER the Republicans in question stopped paying Fusion GPS for opposition research on Donald Trump
So it was, in fact, first paid for by Republicans.
>I also want to make it clear that my ideas of a free and open Internet do not include sanctioned/allowed illegal activity
The problem - and it is NOT solvable - is identity.
Either you can trace it or you can't, there's no middle ground. With the ability to identify who the source of illegal content is, you can stop illegal content (or at least catch after the fact those who share it). Without it, you can just give up trying.
Content itself can be masked any number of ways and WILL be so masked if you try to block something. Ultimately you will rely on investigating complaints, which brings you back to the identity problem.
I stopped thinking anything would happen to Trump when he went crazy over the inauguration photos and the Republican party didn't immediately convene to discuss how to remove someone that divorced from reality from the White House.
Instead, people supported him, and continued with every new inappropriate thing he said afterwards. I don't care if his support is slowly falling in the polls to record lows, nothing seems to stop his party and their core voters from unconditionally supporting him.
I'm not even particularly confident Mueller could produce a damning report that wouldn't be dismissed as 'fake news'. Impeachment would still require at least some republicans to turn on Trump.
>they were acting in a criminal manner to rig the nomination process
The party was in a financial mess, and Team Hillary essentially bought the debt and the right to have significant control of the party with it. Not illegal in the slightest, 'just' slightly unethical in that it was not traditionally how things were done.
Also, as it turns out, a giant mistake because Hillary was not actually a viable candidate.
> and to burn Trump with made with a made up dossier .
Nope. You know that dossier was first commissioned by Republicans, right? And then shopped to the Democrats after Trump secured the Republican nomination? It's standard opposition research. They even do it to themselves to see where they're vulnerable.
Oh, and it's not made up. Some of it is of questionable reliability, but that's what happens when you go looking for dirt - sometimes you get bad leads. It was put together by a former British intelligence agent, and recently another one gave public comment to the effect that it was actually credible.
So while I'd question the bits about the hookers and watersports, I wouldn't throw the whole report in the garbage. There's stuff in there worth investigating, ESPECIALLY when Trump calls it 'fake news'. With Trump, that's code for, 'could be bad for me'.
>Where I live (far away from the US in Europe), absolutely everybody I've ever talked to about Trump thinks that he's an idiot.
Must be a distance thing. I'm in Canada and there are definitely a few people here who think he's OK (though with a lot of excuses, mainly for his tweets). Not enough to get him elected dog catcher, but there are fans.
If you look at my post history, you'll find I'm decidedly on the Anti-Trump bandwagon. (As a non-American, not living in the USA, I feel somewhat impartial and think my opinion that Trump is a dangerous, divisive and disruptive idiot is my opinion because it's the truth, not because I'm partisan)
So, with that huge disclaimer that's probably lost you by now... I would find it more difficult to believe the USA never attempts to affect Russian politics than to believe it was making such attempts.
I'd actually want proof they WEREN'T interfering. Which is, of course, impossible. At best you could show they're not doing anything overt.
The USA meddles everywhere (even when they don't do it deliberately) simply because they are the biggest single political, economic, cultural, and military force in the world. And just to be clear, I'd say it's credible that they deliberately interfere in Russian politics.
>Most likely doesn't want to Prove that AC is really a Russian troll.
Maybe I'm too optimistic, but I'd like to believe the Russians are recoiling in horror at how effective their efforts have been.
They might be in competition with the USA and gain a little at their expense, but too much disruption is bad for everyone's business. On the other hand... the full potential of an American return to isolationism is nowhere near being realized, so maybe the Russians are pleased with the results.
My grandkids may one day be able to read a reasonable analysis of it all, I doubt those of us living through it will ever have a comprehensive objective grasp on it.
>Mueller has been at it for almost a year now and besides some sound bites and headlines on CNN nothing truly significant has come out yet.
Didn't Watergate take a couple of years before Nixon resigned?
I think you vastly underestimate the time requirements of a properly executed investigation of a sitting president.
>He's wasting time, trying to keep his job afloat. When he's done his career will be over and he knows it.
That sounds like what you hope to be true, but Mueller's professional reputation will be affected by how well his team follows the rules for such investigations.
>Up to this point it still appears that Russia bought some ads to try to sway the vote.
Well... more than that. There's also the bot net deployed to make certain opinions look vastly more popular than they were.
But how upset are you supposed to get about that when your own country has a history of funding outright revolutions and installing puppet regimes?
>There is no evidence that they hacked any voting machines.
I really don't understand why Americans tolerate their current voting system. Computer-tallied paper ballots and pencils with ballot boxes and any manual counting observed by the candidate's representatives is pretty solid.
Computer kiosks with known flaws, with the electronic records purged ASAP looks an awful lot like the dream system of someone who wants to generate whatever result they like and should offend (and terrify) the average voter.
>Such an obvious cover up that no evidence has been found.
Just lie after lie uncovered about meeting with Russians. Just that.
But if you repeat your lie - "no evidence has been found" often enough, something like 30-50% of the USA will either believe it or pretend to believe it in order to keep your team in power.
You know, people say Obama was a great president (well... probably not a lot of Republicans), but I think Obama's ultimate legacy will be that on his way out he goaded Trump into running for president so he could destroy everything Obama did.
I also think history may just decide that enough Americans weren't ready for a black man in the Oval Office that it provided support for an unfit racist white guy to move into it next.
There's no evidence that's happening, and in fact there is evidence to the contrary. Not much, though, because Mueller is being a professional about it all. Oh noes! Someone on his team thinks Trump's an idiot and got booted! Let me let you in on a secret: the vast majority of those who have taken notice of Trump think he's an idiot. It'd be surprising if there weren't people on Mueller's team of the same opinion. (Though it's sad they were unprofessional enough to go on about it in a recorded medium).
>dems refocusing on sexual assault allegations against Trump,
Much like rabid Republicans, they're jumping to whatever is currently in the public eye and looks like it'll work. This is surprising how?
> I think this is pretty much bullshit until they release it.
Much like Trump's claims of wealth and his denial of Russian connections. Bullshit until it's backed up by documentation.
And honestly, there's not a person in the world with less credibility than Trump when it comes to the truth, so by default I'd logically have to accept almost anyone else's word over his until proof is provided.
Slashdot Mirror
>Soon theyâ(TM)ll be ditching the Feel the Bern shirts and voting Republican.
"If you're a conservative before 25 you have no heart. If you're liberal after 35 you have no brain."
It's too old, and there are too many variants to attribute that quote correctly. I think it's a false dichotomy anyway; there are a LOT of social issues on which you might have opinions, and it seems extremely unlikely they're all going to fall into the same camp (whichever it may be).
I'm not particularly keen on the left OR right sides of modern Western politics, as both will put ideology over reality at the drop of a hat.
As a general rule (an unresearched, unscientific gut-feeling kind of rule!), people do seem to get more conservative as they age. I think it's fear - fear of losing what they have accrued, fear of a lifetime of experience becoming less relevant as they age, and an unwillingness to re-examine things they think they got figured out decades prior.
My understanding of the basic experiment is this:
1) Get binoculars.
2) Get a lift to a place where boats are likely to approach from a great distance (I live near Lake Ontario, so this is easy for me).
3) Use binoculars to note that you see the tops of distant boats first, not the whole thing only smaller.
4) Use your brain to recognize this is in perfect accordance with a curved Earth.
Alternatively, with a bit more brain effort, you get a couple of balls, a couple of cardboard disks and a flashlight, and go into a dark room to compare what happens when you cast shadows from one object onto another, then compare that to the phases of the Moon.
If none of that is sufficiently compelling, there's always the 'plastic bag over the head, duct taped around the neck' experiment. It won't tell you the Earth is round, but it WILL be an interesting experiment in eugenics.
>While it will eventually result in higher-density housing being built in some of the affected areas, eventually improving rental pricing,
Human societies are similar to forests in this aspect - occasionally we need a fire (or other disaster, like a big war) to wreak some destruction so in the long run we remain healthy.
In the case of humans, we invest in infrastructure and then as long as we have a choice, are extremely hesitant to tear it down and rebuild with something better. Even if we see other, newer places, are leaving us behind.
Burn it down and that option is no longer viable, so we move forward.
[quoteblock]The summary itself states the reason for the guideline is to make passage of legislation easier to get past Republicans in congress. ...
The idiots on the left and the right will believe just about anything if it makes the other side look evil.[/quoteblock]
So you're saying that if this isn't an attempt at suppressing phrases by Republicans, but instead a suggestion (presumably from non-Republicans) to avoid using those words because they're going to trigger a predictable response from enough Republicans to be a problem... yeah, evil Republicans.
Either way, the Republicans are definitely the bad guys in this case.
But "community standards", your religious viewpoints, or any other fantasies you believe in this week can indeed affect reality, since a good portion of our human-scale reality is political.
For instance, any social issue where a solid statistical analysis shows that you can reduce a problem with something that goes against people's gut feelings. Abortion and birth control access would be the first two I'd suspect the right would go after. Crime and punishment would be a close second. In both cases we have good evidence that the emotional response is counterproductive to a happier society, and the people having the strongest emotional responses... don't care.
Now you have a government that is saying it doesn't either.
The problem with that replacement phrase is that it is a literal implementation of a policy of 'feelz over realz'.
"In consideration with community standards and wishes" translates to, "if we don't like the results of the scientific process, we'll override them".
IIRC, there was also a commercial system for an IR LED-based WLAN for offices that couldn't run data cabling for some reason... I never heard of it ever being deployed, though.
If letting the Chinese spy on me gets me a phone at half the local cost, I'm OK with that.
Once I have an always-on, location-aware device on my person, somebody's tracking it. The Chinese are less likely to do anything with whatever information they gather on me, AND they're not in the same country. Or on the same continent.
Then there's the fact that the particular phone I have has been torn down, and the software disassembled by 'reputable hackers'... and only the usual adware crap was found, which you can uninstall.
Better than Apple, since I can do with my phone whatever the hardware allows and the manufacturer won't even TRY to stop me.
There's a huge double standard there, for sure.
I have a simple rule - if Trump says it, it's probably self-serving bullshit that his supporters will accept as gospel. Surprisingly, sometimes he gets things right anyway, but I still wouldn't trust him to tell me the time of day.
And the voice processing should be local, too. No traffic should leave your LAN unless it's critical to the function it serves... which should be what YOU want, not what some tech company wants.
It'll happen (if it hasn't already). There will be a FOSS project at some point and you'll be able to install your own system that isn't owned by a megacorp. And you know what? As a percentage of the market I doubt anyone will use it because they'll be happy with their Google Home or Amazon Alexa.
>(A properly placed pigeon, blocking the receive aperture, is equivalent to 10-30dB of path loss ... since I know you were wondering
I've worked with microwave systems. A flock of birds could cause the system to fail over to a redundant path.
I could also watch weather fronts move through the region as signal quality dropped then (usually) recovered.
We never had problems with pigeons roosting, though. First, the antennas had covers over them, but second... anything that could manage to cling to those would probably be cooked to death and fall before I could get a tower crew out to clear the obstruction.
Now, rural ya-hoos taking pot shots at the antennas? Problem.
First... 'light beam'? Let me suggest first that they should have said something like 'laser signalling without fibre optic cables'. I dunno, maybe I'm crazy.
Second, it'd be interesting to know what kind of laser - specifically, the particular window of EM they're utilizing. That will have a huge effect on what kind of atmospheric conditions it can tolerate, and how far it's good for. I've gone three links in and still can't find any mention of what frequency range they're talking about. And details on any automatic aim-adjustment tech would be awesome.
Third - and I know I'm probably a weirdo here - I wonder if anyone considered non-collimated light for broadcast? You might think of that as 'radio', but assuming we're talking near-visible spectrum it's a bit different.
In short, this press release has insufficient data to generate meaningful discussion.
>The dossier was NOT "first commissioned by Republicans". Christopher Steele was not hired by Fusion GPS until AFTER the Republicans in question stopped paying Fusion GPS for opposition research on Donald Trump
So it was, in fact, first paid for by Republicans.
>I also want to make it clear that my ideas of a free and open Internet do not include sanctioned/allowed illegal activity
The problem - and it is NOT solvable - is identity.
Either you can trace it or you can't, there's no middle ground. With the ability to identify who the source of illegal content is, you can stop illegal content (or at least catch after the fact those who share it). Without it, you can just give up trying.
Content itself can be masked any number of ways and WILL be so masked if you try to block something. Ultimately you will rely on investigating complaints, which brings you back to the identity problem.
>as for the second one - just stand by
I stopped thinking anything would happen to Trump when he went crazy over the inauguration photos and the Republican party didn't immediately convene to discuss how to remove someone that divorced from reality from the White House.
Instead, people supported him, and continued with every new inappropriate thing he said afterwards. I don't care if his support is slowly falling in the polls to record lows, nothing seems to stop his party and their core voters from unconditionally supporting him.
I'm not even particularly confident Mueller could produce a damning report that wouldn't be dismissed as 'fake news'. Impeachment would still require at least some republicans to turn on Trump.
>they were acting in a criminal manner to rig the nomination process
The party was in a financial mess, and Team Hillary essentially bought the debt and the right to have significant control of the party with it. Not illegal in the slightest, 'just' slightly unethical in that it was not traditionally how things were done.
Also, as it turns out, a giant mistake because Hillary was not actually a viable candidate.
> and to burn Trump with made with a made up dossier .
Nope. You know that dossier was first commissioned by Republicans, right? And then shopped to the Democrats after Trump secured the Republican nomination? It's standard opposition research. They even do it to themselves to see where they're vulnerable.
Oh, and it's not made up. Some of it is of questionable reliability, but that's what happens when you go looking for dirt - sometimes you get bad leads. It was put together by a former British intelligence agent, and recently another one gave public comment to the effect that it was actually credible.
So while I'd question the bits about the hookers and watersports, I wouldn't throw the whole report in the garbage. There's stuff in there worth investigating, ESPECIALLY when Trump calls it 'fake news'. With Trump, that's code for, 'could be bad for me'.
>Where I live (far away from the US in Europe), absolutely everybody I've ever talked to about Trump thinks that he's an idiot.
Must be a distance thing. I'm in Canada and there are definitely a few people here who think he's OK (though with a lot of excuses, mainly for his tweets). Not enough to get him elected dog catcher, but there are fans.
If you look at my post history, you'll find I'm decidedly on the Anti-Trump bandwagon. (As a non-American, not living in the USA, I feel somewhat impartial and think my opinion that Trump is a dangerous, divisive and disruptive idiot is my opinion because it's the truth, not because I'm partisan)
So, with that huge disclaimer that's probably lost you by now... I would find it more difficult to believe the USA never attempts to affect Russian politics than to believe it was making such attempts.
I'd actually want proof they WEREN'T interfering. Which is, of course, impossible. At best you could show they're not doing anything overt.
The USA meddles everywhere (even when they don't do it deliberately) simply because they are the biggest single political, economic, cultural, and military force in the world. And just to be clear, I'd say it's credible that they deliberately interfere in Russian politics.
>Most likely doesn't want to Prove that AC is really a Russian troll.
Maybe I'm too optimistic, but I'd like to believe the Russians are recoiling in horror at how effective their efforts have been.
They might be in competition with the USA and gain a little at their expense, but too much disruption is bad for everyone's business. On the other hand... the full potential of an American return to isolationism is nowhere near being realized, so maybe the Russians are pleased with the results.
My grandkids may one day be able to read a reasonable analysis of it all, I doubt those of us living through it will ever have a comprehensive objective grasp on it.
>Mueller has been at it for almost a year now and besides some sound bites and headlines on CNN nothing truly significant has come out yet.
Didn't Watergate take a couple of years before Nixon resigned?
I think you vastly underestimate the time requirements of a properly executed investigation of a sitting president.
>He's wasting time, trying to keep his job afloat. When he's done his career will be over and he knows it.
That sounds like what you hope to be true, but Mueller's professional reputation will be affected by how well his team follows the rules for such investigations.
>Up to this point it still appears that Russia bought some ads to try to sway the vote.
Well... more than that. There's also the bot net deployed to make certain opinions look vastly more popular than they were.
But how upset are you supposed to get about that when your own country has a history of funding outright revolutions and installing puppet regimes?
>There is no evidence that they hacked any voting machines.
I really don't understand why Americans tolerate their current voting system. Computer-tallied paper ballots and pencils with ballot boxes and any manual counting observed by the candidate's representatives is pretty solid.
Computer kiosks with known flaws, with the electronic records purged ASAP looks an awful lot like the dream system of someone who wants to generate whatever result they like and should offend (and terrify) the average voter.
>No no... there's no evidence at all
There you go, you're getting it! Keep repeating your lies!
That stuff that was in the news? The changing stories from those involved as their lies were exposed? FAKE NEWS!!!
Posting as AC, though... weak. You lack the courage of your convictions.
>Such an obvious cover up that no evidence has been found.
Just lie after lie uncovered about meeting with Russians. Just that.
But if you repeat your lie - "no evidence has been found" often enough, something like 30-50% of the USA will either believe it or pretend to believe it in order to keep your team in power.
Party over country, all the way down!
>Just say that Obama wanted the opposite.
You know, people say Obama was a great president (well... probably not a lot of Republicans), but I think Obama's ultimate legacy will be that on his way out he goaded Trump into running for president so he could destroy everything Obama did.
I also think history may just decide that enough Americans weren't ready for a black man in the Oval Office that it provided support for an unfit racist white guy to move into it next.
>With the Meuller investigation falling apart
There's no evidence that's happening, and in fact there is evidence to the contrary. Not much, though, because Mueller is being a professional about it all. Oh noes! Someone on his team thinks Trump's an idiot and got booted! Let me let you in on a secret: the vast majority of those who have taken notice of Trump think he's an idiot. It'd be surprising if there weren't people on Mueller's team of the same opinion. (Though it's sad they were unprofessional enough to go on about it in a recorded medium).
>dems refocusing on sexual assault allegations against Trump,
Much like rabid Republicans, they're jumping to whatever is currently in the public eye and looks like it'll work. This is surprising how?
> I think this is pretty much bullshit until they release it.
Much like Trump's claims of wealth and his denial of Russian connections. Bullshit until it's backed up by documentation.
And honestly, there's not a person in the world with less credibility than Trump when it comes to the truth, so by default I'd logically have to accept almost anyone else's word over his until proof is provided.