I thought the two hunters joke in the article was pretty darn funny, so I posted it a couple of hours ago on Facebook. My friends sent this news story, about a Vermont hunter who accidentally shot his friend and then turned his own rifle on himself (I immediately took down the joke) http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/11/27/9049544-two-dead-in-vermont-hunting-accident So I guess humor is in timing,. Perhaps timing (rate of global extinctions) also explains why the animals aren't laughing.
Some passionate NGO spokesperson comes up with a master plan to correct the problem they've achieved public passion for or recognition of, legislators pass legislation allowing a plan to be implemented. The actual implementation and regulations are then turned over to government employees. Per TFA:
"In Alberta, the Department of Environment and Water requires facilities to have their emission estimates (and offset projects) independently verified. The department also uses another set of verifiers to confirm reports for a sample of those facilities that are signed up to the scheme. The UN’s CDM keeps track of all eligible projects in an online registry."
What separates recognizable humor from The Joker's mental illness is consensus (per TFA, the funniest joke is determined by votes). At least, that's the methodology according to TFA. I may find a joke insanely hilarious, but it has to be modded up by society to be measured as humorous. And if some things are found only funny in hindsight, cockroaches will probably have the last laugh.
Every time there's a NEW way of tracking personal info, the call goes out... The Sky Is Falling!! Before I assume it's Big Brother marries Sauron, how has the information I KNOW is gathered about me used so far and in the past? The creepiest things so far have been credit card companies (but now that porn is free, not nearly as creepy), internet ads, and who knows what the phone company is up to.
In order of ACTUAL risk of loss of privacy
- Banks, credit cards
- Snoopy neighbors, inlaws, and work colleagues
- Social Network Businesses (phone companies, google, Facebook)
- Sauron, Tom Cruise, FBI
The beginning of the problem is that someone actually begins to give a shit what someone else is doing. Actually, I see less and less of that.
Let's just divide everything in the world into patents. Like, Written on QWERTY vs. Not-Written-on-QWERTY. Patent on English, corresponding Patent on Non-English, whatever. Then we auction off the two patents for a trillion dollars and let the two trolls sue each other to hell.
Or another brain is wasted explaining something for the fifteenth goddamn time. What we need is an IVR that can detect intelligence, to screen calls, and send the idiot callers to have their explanations performed by the lowest wage brains. "If you haven't been listening to options 1-9, press 10". Seriously, dignity of human interaction is sometimes overrated when it involves angry callers insisting on the irrational, at least from the service providers perspective.
I became herbally fascinated by the ability to use "footnotes" on a VAX machine in college to document "digression". I stayed up most of the night trying to sketch out the nested "footnote-on-footnote" regressions and became convinced it was some kind of post-modern, exponential literature. Wow, in fact it wasn't even constrained to literature, it could wander into philosophy, science, anything. It could begin a process of footnoting translations. Unfortunately, in the morning, everything I'd written was as boring as this article. Or perhaps it was just over my head.
My company wipes and destroys hard drives. We do it because everyone demands it. And we charge something for it. And yes, there is some degree of risk about hard drive data being recovered. Just not in proportion to the hysteria. I had a public school official loudly insist that we put her school computers at highest priority of data destruction because, she explained, some of the children who used some of the computers were mentally challenged, and she could not take the risk that someone might find the work they did on the computers and make fun of them. Here I am, 6 years later, making fun of HER.
While nothing is zero risk, it's pretty unlikely someone is going to get your data THAT way. The cases of identity theft are mostly A) stolen data IN USE (lost laptop, phishing, corporate espionage), or B) waiters and waitresses addicted to drugs (taking credit card info), or C) companies like mine who want to scare clients... and all of those are distant second to someone pilfering your mailbox. No anonymous person is rebooting anonymous Pentium 2s looking for your letter to your divorce lawyer.
Again, I'm not being reckless, and wouldn't want people to think we don't do what we promise. Just the hysteria over the risk of simple reformatting is similar, statistically, to a shark attack. Yes, you should wipe the drive, especially if you store passwords or credit card info, but I don't imagine many thieves running reverse-wiping software unless they already know the person and are looking for something specific... it's too easy to get the same information from a current PC via phishing or looking over someone's shoulder. Sometimes I suspect the whole hard drive scare was cooked up by Intuit, Microsoft, Adobe, etc. and its all about getting us to wipe off hundreds of dollars of software.
Back in the day, the malls had a person with a thumb-clicker counting people as they walked through doors. I didn't consider it a privacy issue. And I assume while I shop online that my movement is being tracked much more closely. But more to the point, shopping malls are going the way of the dodo. The Mall company may find it a pretty depressing set of data. http://themoderatevoice.com/27443/economys-latest-victim-shopping-malls-are-closing/
Been there, done that. Between 2002 and 2009 I sold about 30,000 sub-$25 PCs to Egyptian geeks, who resold them in "Technology Malls". Our last 3 containerloads were seized by Egyptian customs and declared "e-waste" because they were "used." Our buyer was upset, but predicted that Mubarak was just "trying to put the genie back in the bottle", and it was too late. See German Language 3Sat.de coverage on how these used PCs played a role in the Arab Spring. http://bit.ly/soIn3G
Seriously, why do wealthy nations spend $25 to shred 3 year old PCs and then try to find ways to make "new" ones with less RAM and Mhz than the shredded ones for $25?
Tell it to Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, etc. It's easy to be cynical, but it looks to me like the Neo-cons are well on the way to creating an anchor democracy in the mideast and the dictatorships surrounding it are crumbling. Reading the same cynical one-liner subjects as nine years ago... looks like 1954.
If I agree with her, and her library has a copy of the book I want, I will read it in hard copy. If I disagree with her, I will resent that she is advocating for all libraries to take this choice from me... Even when they don't HAVE a copy of the book I want to read in hard copy.
Actually, this is the only Kindle program I really like. Participating libraries can provide something they may not HAVE a copy of (saving small libraries). And if they DO have the hard paper copy, I'd probably prefer it anyway, so what's the harm?
If multiple people read a book, the positive environmental impact of reuse offsets the cost of printing, and beats the Kindle. But if it's an obscure book that only I want to read, it's better for me to read it on a borrowed Kindle. Environmental cost of production of the laptop or Kindle is only offset after thousands of reads (obviously Amazon's goal), but the average years of use of new electronic gadgets makes that milestone, per Kindle, unlikely in a single-kindle-owner-user basis.
The librarian tirade seems to say this should not even be attempted on a trial basis. What does it amount to, 1% of library readership? If it increases the number of people who go to the library, she should dance a jig on Kindle's behalf.
Written by a troll on a computer with a hard drive engineered in Singapore. Fifty years ago, Singapore was a malaria pit. Today it has hospitals which rival anything in the West. And they engineer hard drives used to write crap about people who will be engineers and software designers fifty years from today if we allow free and fair trade to run its course.
Malaria kills about 2414 people per day. But the number one cause of death for women in places like Lagos and Cairo is blood loss during childbirth. The West's invention of a malaria vaccine will be hugely important. But in the meantime, during Cohen's 24 years of working on the vaccines, the west has criminalized the sale of surplus property from USA hospitals to emerging markets. Shredding our own surplus property causes our health care costs to go up, and forces emerging markets to buy brand new equipment they cannot afford, which takes money they need - to buy malaria vaccines. They need computers and need basic things like hospital beds. Here is a link to a story which ran yesterday, that "medical waste" was illegally shipped to Brazil. Had the story translated... it was uniforms and beds. The message is that Western hospitals cannot share surplus property - computers, blood gas analyzers, or beds - with emerging markets. By coincidence, 24 years ago I lived in Africa as a Peace Corps volunteer, and had to dig a grave for a colleagues two year old son. I kept links there and have been trying to help the hospitals during the same 24 years. During the past 24 years, while Cohen perfected his vaccine, donations of surplus property to hospitals in Africa has been criminalized. Sometimes simple things, like donating hospital beds, can save as many people over the period as a new vaccine. The system is sick. http://retroworks.blogspot.com/2011/10/headline-medical-waste-exported-to.html
Everyone has been exposed to TV since Howdy Doody and Clarabel the Clown. What the study shows is that human contact and caring - WITH or WITHOUT television - is goodness. If you substitute TV for empty room, good. Substitute TV for siblings fighting in living room, ok. Substitute TV for caring interactive parents? Bad, Maybe?
Slashdot Mirror
I thought the two hunters joke in the article was pretty darn funny, so I posted it a couple of hours ago on Facebook. My friends sent this news story, about a Vermont hunter who accidentally shot his friend and then turned his own rifle on himself (I immediately took down the joke) http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/11/27/9049544-two-dead-in-vermont-hunting-accident So I guess humor is in timing,. Perhaps timing (rate of global extinctions) also explains why the animals aren't laughing.
Some passionate NGO spokesperson comes up with a master plan to correct the problem they've achieved public passion for or recognition of, legislators pass legislation allowing a plan to be implemented. The actual implementation and regulations are then turned over to government employees. Per TFA:
"In Alberta, the Department of Environment and Water requires facilities to have their emission estimates (and offset projects) independently verified. The department also uses another set of verifiers to confirm reports for a sample of those facilities that are signed up to the scheme. The UN’s CDM keeps track of all eligible projects in an online registry."
Gee, how could something like that possibly fail?
What separates recognizable humor from The Joker's mental illness is consensus (per TFA, the funniest joke is determined by votes). At least, that's the methodology according to TFA. I may find a joke insanely hilarious, but it has to be modded up by society to be measured as humorous. And if some things are found only funny in hindsight, cockroaches will probably have the last laugh.
Every time there's a NEW way of tracking personal info, the call goes out... The Sky Is Falling!! Before I assume it's Big Brother marries Sauron, how has the information I KNOW is gathered about me used so far and in the past? The creepiest things so far have been credit card companies (but now that porn is free, not nearly as creepy), internet ads, and who knows what the phone company is up to.
In order of ACTUAL risk of loss of privacy
- Banks, credit cards
- Snoopy neighbors, inlaws, and work colleagues
- Social Network Businesses (phone companies, google, Facebook)
- Sauron, Tom Cruise, FBI
The beginning of the problem is that someone actually begins to give a shit what someone else is doing. Actually, I see less and less of that.
Let's just divide everything in the world into patents. Like, Written on QWERTY vs. Not-Written-on-QWERTY. Patent on English, corresponding Patent on Non-English, whatever. Then we auction off the two patents for a trillion dollars and let the two trolls sue each other to hell.
Now for the digital hearing aid, which will transform anything said to me into a compliment.
I cannot detect whether or not you are being sarcastic.
Or another brain is wasted explaining something for the fifteenth goddamn time. What we need is an IVR that can detect intelligence, to screen calls, and send the idiot callers to have their explanations performed by the lowest wage brains. "If you haven't been listening to options 1-9, press 10". Seriously, dignity of human interaction is sometimes overrated when it involves angry callers insisting on the irrational, at least from the service providers perspective.
I became herbally fascinated by the ability to use "footnotes" on a VAX machine in college to document "digression". I stayed up most of the night trying to sketch out the nested "footnote-on-footnote" regressions and became convinced it was some kind of post-modern, exponential literature. Wow, in fact it wasn't even constrained to literature, it could wander into philosophy, science, anything. It could begin a process of footnoting translations. Unfortunately, in the morning, everything I'd written was as boring as this article. Or perhaps it was just over my head.
My company wipes and destroys hard drives. We do it because everyone demands it. And we charge something for it. And yes, there is some degree of risk about hard drive data being recovered. Just not in proportion to the hysteria. I had a public school official loudly insist that we put her school computers at highest priority of data destruction because, she explained, some of the children who used some of the computers were mentally challenged, and she could not take the risk that someone might find the work they did on the computers and make fun of them. Here I am, 6 years later, making fun of HER.
While nothing is zero risk, it's pretty unlikely someone is going to get your data THAT way. The cases of identity theft are mostly A) stolen data IN USE (lost laptop, phishing, corporate espionage), or B) waiters and waitresses addicted to drugs (taking credit card info), or C) companies like mine who want to scare clients... and all of those are distant second to someone pilfering your mailbox. No anonymous person is rebooting anonymous Pentium 2s looking for your letter to your divorce lawyer.
Again, I'm not being reckless, and wouldn't want people to think we don't do what we promise. Just the hysteria over the risk of simple reformatting is similar, statistically, to a shark attack. Yes, you should wipe the drive, especially if you store passwords or credit card info, but I don't imagine many thieves running reverse-wiping software unless they already know the person and are looking for something specific... it's too easy to get the same information from a current PC via phishing or looking over someone's shoulder. Sometimes I suspect the whole hard drive scare was cooked up by Intuit, Microsoft, Adobe, etc. and its all about getting us to wipe off hundreds of dollars of software.
Back in the day, the malls had a person with a thumb-clicker counting people as they walked through doors. I didn't consider it a privacy issue. And I assume while I shop online that my movement is being tracked much more closely. But more to the point, shopping malls are going the way of the dodo. The Mall company may find it a pretty depressing set of data. http://themoderatevoice.com/27443/economys-latest-victim-shopping-malls-are-closing/
Coming Soon: Opportunity to Opt Out of the Opt Out List.
Three years ago, the story had much better pictures. Alas, Oct 2008 was not a great time to raise capital. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=sticky-situation-gecko-toe-adhesive
That's sooo 80s.
Hey, beats a shark joke. Let's mine 70s TV for a change.
Evolution is a tricky argument for we the living.
Could do it one time, the get out of hock free card, payable to the Federal Reserve Bank.
So as I understand it, this is aimed at 1) people too dumb to program a programmable thermostat, and 2) people smart enough to give a shit.
That market, traditionally, is government activists.
Therefore, I should wait until it is free.
Been there, done that. Between 2002 and 2009 I sold about 30,000 sub-$25 PCs to Egyptian geeks, who resold them in "Technology Malls". Our last 3 containerloads were seized by Egyptian customs and declared "e-waste" because they were "used." Our buyer was upset, but predicted that Mubarak was just "trying to put the genie back in the bottle", and it was too late. See German Language 3Sat.de coverage on how these used PCs played a role in the Arab Spring. http://bit.ly/soIn3G
Seriously, why do wealthy nations spend $25 to shred 3 year old PCs and then try to find ways to make "new" ones with less RAM and Mhz than the shredded ones for $25?
Tell it to Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, etc. It's easy to be cynical, but it looks to me like the Neo-cons are well on the way to creating an anchor democracy in the mideast and the dictatorships surrounding it are crumbling. Reading the same cynical one-liner subjects as nine years ago... looks like 1954.
If I agree with her, and her library has a copy of the book I want, I will read it in hard copy. If I disagree with her, I will resent that she is advocating for all libraries to take this choice from me... Even when they don't HAVE a copy of the book I want to read in hard copy.
Actually, this is the only Kindle program I really like. Participating libraries can provide something they may not HAVE a copy of (saving small libraries). And if they DO have the hard paper copy, I'd probably prefer it anyway, so what's the harm?
If multiple people read a book, the positive environmental impact of reuse offsets the cost of printing, and beats the Kindle. But if it's an obscure book that only I want to read, it's better for me to read it on a borrowed Kindle. Environmental cost of production of the laptop or Kindle is only offset after thousands of reads (obviously Amazon's goal), but the average years of use of new electronic gadgets makes that milestone, per Kindle, unlikely in a single-kindle-owner-user basis.
The librarian tirade seems to say this should not even be attempted on a trial basis. What does it amount to, 1% of library readership? If it increases the number of people who go to the library, she should dance a jig on Kindle's behalf.
Written by a troll on a computer with a hard drive engineered in Singapore. Fifty years ago, Singapore was a malaria pit. Today it has hospitals which rival anything in the West. And they engineer hard drives used to write crap about people who will be engineers and software designers fifty years from today if we allow free and fair trade to run its course.
Malaria kills about 2414 people per day. But the number one cause of death for women in places like Lagos and Cairo is blood loss during childbirth. The West's invention of a malaria vaccine will be hugely important. But in the meantime, during Cohen's 24 years of working on the vaccines, the west has criminalized the sale of surplus property from USA hospitals to emerging markets. Shredding our own surplus property causes our health care costs to go up, and forces emerging markets to buy brand new equipment they cannot afford, which takes money they need - to buy malaria vaccines. They need computers and need basic things like hospital beds. Here is a link to a story which ran yesterday, that "medical waste" was illegally shipped to Brazil. Had the story translated... it was uniforms and beds. The message is that Western hospitals cannot share surplus property - computers, blood gas analyzers, or beds - with emerging markets. By coincidence, 24 years ago I lived in Africa as a Peace Corps volunteer, and had to dig a grave for a colleagues two year old son. I kept links there and have been trying to help the hospitals during the same 24 years. During the past 24 years, while Cohen perfected his vaccine, donations of surplus property to hospitals in Africa has been criminalized. Sometimes simple things, like donating hospital beds, can save as many people over the period as a new vaccine. The system is sick. http://retroworks.blogspot.com/2011/10/headline-medical-waste-exported-to.html
Damn, that's exactly what I was going to say.
Everyone has been exposed to TV since Howdy Doody and Clarabel the Clown. What the study shows is that human contact and caring - WITH or WITHOUT television - is goodness. If you substitute TV for empty room, good. Substitute TV for siblings fighting in living room, ok. Substitute TV for caring interactive parents? Bad, Maybe?