Did you even read the...
Silly me. Of course you didn't. Otherwise, you'd have known that the author was talking about a good many mediums and applications of "writing", not just term papers.
Left behind, indeed.
Sorry, but you are incorrect in your assertion the TPB is engaging in illegal activity, unless you are prepared to argue that any purveyor of a particular technology is guilty of a crime if someone uses that technology to commit a crime.
Yes, yes, we needn't exchange winks. We all know that a huge portion of the traffic that TPB facilitates is illegal file-sharing, but TPB is no more guilty of file sharing than any of the technology providers along the entire path over which those files are shared, which is to say, "not at all". It is the user who employed the technology for illegal purposes that committed the crime, not his ISP, their bandwidth providers, and certainly not TPB.
I have a.223 that sends 40 gr moly-coated Vmax bullets out at about 3700 fps. Punching holes in a hard drive is nothing. I want to see what really fast, highly frangible bullets do to a spinning hard drive.
I have a stack of old drives, an old AT power supply, a 12v battery, and a DC inverter (it's 100 yards down to the impact area - that's a lot of extension cord to roll up when done). Now I just need to scare up a video camera that is up to the task of documenting the drives' demise.
So the mythical "free market" would take care of keeping the wireless spectrum from descending into chaos. Right...
"The commons", those parts of our community that, for a host of practical reasons, are shared by all, should always be regulated by a body that has the community's best interest as it's sole concern. Utilities, roads, navigable waters, etc. Without such regulation there is waste, corruption, and eventually, a monopoly with a stranglehold on a significant portion of the economy. Deregulating the radio spectrum, for reasons that become patently obvious upon adequate reflection (say... 10 seconds or so), is hugely stupid idea.
Wikus was perhaps the most trite in a cast of trite characters. The whole, "shallow asshole has a life-changing experience" thing has been done many, many times already. And Wikus was quite the shallow asshole, as in "the writer and director are clubbing us over the head with examples of it". As for his "change of heart", little real change was exhibited until way late in the story. Up to that point, yes, he wanted back his wife and the shallow, protected life provided by his marriage to the daughter of a powerful man, but that's a motivation that is self-serving. Pretty much completely missing from the story was the dramatic catalyst that would cause such an asshole to really change.
**** SPOILER ALERT ******
Yes, Wikus finally makes a meaningful change, exhibited by his selfless actions in the last scene, but that was inconsistent with the character up to this point. There was nothing in the story that would have shown the protagonist as starting to see the injustice of everything he had done and stood for. They had the opportunity, in the MNU med lab. The dramatic tension that came about as the alien wandered about, realizing the sickening truth about what had gone on there, was completely squandered as the story blew right past the moment in favor of another flashy CGI shoot-em-up. The story has several such points, where the protagonist might have reached this moral denouement, but it never really executed.
I have seen none of those on your list, but I have seen "District 9". IMO, it won't take much for one of the others to top it.
I'm sorry, but once you get past the "apartheid, only with aliens this time" metaphor (which is difficult to do because the movie clubs you over the head with it every fifteen minutes), there just isn't much story, and what there is, is pretty trite. Same goes for the characters.
Yes, the CGI effects were astoundingly good. Best I've ever seen, but special effects to not a great movie make.
Er..., no. If this was Windows, you'd never have heard of it, period. Until, that it is, MS got around to fixing it or an exploit in the wild got everyone's attention.
You're missing the point. "Sky fairy" comments are just another form of the "pouncing" I was talking about.
Look, I have certain spiritual beliefs. They are deeply held and a central part of my life, but if I were stupid enough to drag them into a debate about the kind of things that are discussed in this forum, I would expect to be roundly derided... for my stupidity, not my beliefs. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but the whole "attack on Christianity" (or whatever dogmatic religion) thing is just a canard put forth every time some reason-challenged dullard has his ass handed to him for citing scripture in defense of his position. Lots of folks, especially here, are keenly aware of that and, reasonably, have no patience for it.
VP of Engineering: "Dude, they're going to find out, and they'll be pissed."
VP of Marketing: "This is going to be great. Think of all the things we could do with this information. Think of all the people we could sell that information to. The feature stays."
...This is not about preaching, this is about setting up an Us vs. Them attitude in the students, to make it easier to accept the irrational. After all, the other side is evil, they wouldn't have been so mean to them if they weren't, they must be wrong...
Exactly!
And we see that illustrated beautifully in the grandparent's post - "If you take the act of posting on a message board, especially one as hostile to religion as Slashdot..."
Slashdot is not intolerant of religion, per se. However, it can be brutally intolerant of badly reasoned arguments, articles of faith presented as proof, and other forms of stupidity. Only the most disingenuous tool would suggest that such a metaphorical "bringing a knife to a gun fight" as cut-and-pasting some lame intelligent design screed into a forum populated by those well-equipped to refute it's every point, is anything other than some form of "Martyrdom Light". Having seen the same pathetic arguments put forth time and again, often verbatim (cut-and-paste counts, remember), the forum regulars can be expected to pounce hard and fast. That's pretty much the definition of trolling, and it has nothing to do with intelligent discourse.
Weird indeed. I am continuously baffled by the hordes of sheep that can be so easily whipped up into a fearful frenzy that they will repeatedly act (vote) against their own best interests.
As for corruption, that's a strong word, and while it is quite often appropriate when applied to corporate behavior, let's not forget that it is the corporation's job to produce profit for it's shareholders. If a corporation can funnel money into politics to gain favorable treatment, and get away with it (legally or not), it has a fiduciary responsibility to do so. Attributing any other motivation (or likely direction) to corporate behavior is a fool's errand. It is the job of the government to ensure that corporations play by the rules, all of them. It is the electorate's job to elect representatives who will represent their interests by making appropriate rules and enforcing them. That ain't happening much these days.
I expect bloggers to go nuts about this sort of thing. What's truly disheartening to me is that a formerly relevant news site like cnn.com has it on their front page. Oh CNN, I remember when you used to report actual news...now look what you've become.
Waxing all a-twitter over twitter is beneath a real news organization (like CNN once was) but giving air every day to a mentally unstable tool like Lou Dobbs is much more troubling.
Dude,
You are one sick bastard... ...and you made me laugh, hard. It's probably well that I never had kids. Yours are in for a rough stretch. Please post the videos to YouTube.
Your point is valid, even if your assertion that Reagan was responsible for the fall of the Soviet Empire is badly off the mark.
I believe that all the arm flapping and orange-alerting about "the terrorists" was much more about cover for political maneuvering (raiding the national treasury for one's cronies) than "keeping us safe".
And Lech Walesa and Charlie Wilson had a hell of a lot more to do with when the inevitable fall of the Soviet Union actually took place than Reagan ever did. Read your history.
It seems at this point like Facebook's plan was to make people think that it was an indispensable part of their lives and then abuse them like this because they know most users still won't quit.
There, fixed it for you.
It can not be stated too often or too forcefully. If you are stupid enough to put anything you might consider to be even remotely private onto a network that is accessible to a sizable chunk of the world's population (i.e., a potentially very public place), then you really shouldn't be surprised when that thing turns up as a subject of discussion on Slashdot. Not that I'm complaining about some of the "should have been kept in the shoe box" stuff that has hit the net, but STFU with the whining about privacy already.
But it's OK for those same western countries to suppress/fine/jail Christian theologians who preach that homosexuality is a sin?
Well..., no. It wouldn't be, if that's what was actually happening. Preaching that this or that arbitrary behavior is a sin is, in my country at least, protected speech. Always has been and, I pray, always will be. On the other hand, inciting violence against such "sinners" is not, and should be prosecuted with all the vigor the law allows.
BTW, constitutionally protected speech is not a guarantee that the speaker is entitled to any given platform, so if you're thinking of some recent homophobic beauty pageant hypocrite being handed her walking papers, try again.
...and I mean that literally. When I read that a modern western country has enacted a law that allows for the prosecution of the "crime" of "blasphemy", I got a cold chill down my spine. What's next? Imprisonment and torture for various forms of heresy?
WTF?
You assume every administration doesn't wipe its ass with the Constitution in one way or another.
I make no such assumption. Lincoln and FDR come immediately to mind. Nevertheless, I challenge you to submit any credible case from recent history, let's say as far back as Nixon, that represents a contempt and disregard for The Constitution anywhere near as egregious as that of the Bush/Cheney regime.
Yoo's name was attached to many of the most important briefs and memos, but it was David Addington, working on behalf of Cheney, who most directly put these disgraceful events in motion. Yoo is now at Berkeley (one notes with no small sense of irony).
Then you need to expand your knowledge. "The Dark Side", by Jane Mayer would be a good start, though I doubt highly that you will expend the effort, because it would threaten your narrow and comfortable view of the world.
Your assumption that the Bush administration did not wipe it's ass with The Constitution of the United States deserves all the derision it is likely to get here on/., for it is utterly without supporting facts. Indeed, more than one U.S. citizen was detained and denied their rights as citizens with nothing more than the disingenuous process of a handful of lawyers drafting documents telling the President he could do pretty much anything he wanted when it came to "terrorists". Add to these few, (most of which, BTW, are probably quite guilty of the crimes they were suspected of), the thousands of other so-called "enemy combatants" who have also been denied their rights under U.S. and international law and you have an episode in U.S. history that is cause for national shame.
Ours is a nation of laws. Those laws, and the principles of liberty and justice that are their underpinnings, recognize no exigency that justifies a government official systematically ignoring those laws. No, not one. And before you dream up some Jack Bauer hypothetical, ticking-clock scenario, read the first sentence in the paragraph again and note the word "systematically". I rather doubt that history nor the courts would judge anyone to harshly for taking whatever action was necessary in such a far-fetched scenario, but that facts are that such was not the scenario. There was only the realization that, despite abundant intelligence that would have pointed the way, the intelligence and law enforcement arms of our government failed badly in the days leading up to 9/11. With this realization came the almost paranoid conviction that "they will hit us again" and the panic-driven actions of a powerful few to prevent that at any cost. The subsequent list of failures to defend, and insults to, The Constitution are well documented and far too many to list here, but the do most certainly, include the illegal interception of the private communications of U.S. citizens. Seriously, put down the neo-con fanboy kool-aid, stop watching Fox News, and see for yourself.
Do the names Enron or Halliburton mean anything to you?
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss...
Only the palms change. The greasing goes on regardless. Vote for candidates who support real campaign finance reform of see this pattern repeated endlessly.
Slashdot Mirror
Did you even read the...
Silly me. Of course you didn't. Otherwise, you'd have known that the author was talking about a good many mediums and applications of "writing", not just term papers.
Left behind, indeed.
Thus the parent's use of the phrase "...gives a whole new meaning to 'Flash heavy'".
Get a life.
Sorry, but you are incorrect in your assertion the TPB is engaging in illegal activity, unless you are prepared to argue that any purveyor of a particular technology is guilty of a crime if someone uses that technology to commit a crime.
Yes, yes, we needn't exchange winks. We all know that a huge portion of the traffic that TPB facilitates is illegal file-sharing, but TPB is no more guilty of file sharing than any of the technology providers along the entire path over which those files are shared, which is to say, "not at all". It is the user who employed the technology for illegal purposes that committed the crime, not his ISP, their bandwidth providers, and certainly not TPB.
I have a .223 that sends 40 gr moly-coated Vmax bullets out at about 3700 fps. Punching holes in a hard drive is nothing. I want to see what really fast, highly frangible bullets do to a spinning hard drive.
I have a stack of old drives, an old AT power supply, a 12v battery, and a DC inverter (it's 100 yards down to the impact area - that's a lot of extension cord to roll up when done). Now I just need to scare up a video camera that is up to the task of documenting the drives' demise.
So the mythical "free market" would take care of keeping the wireless spectrum from descending into chaos. Right...
"The commons", those parts of our community that, for a host of practical reasons, are shared by all, should always be regulated by a body that has the community's best interest as it's sole concern. Utilities, roads, navigable waters, etc. Without such regulation there is waste, corruption, and eventually, a monopoly with a stranglehold on a significant portion of the economy. Deregulating the radio spectrum, for reasons that become patently obvious upon adequate reflection (say... 10 seconds or so), is hugely stupid idea.
Wikus was perhaps the most trite in a cast of trite characters. The whole, "shallow asshole has a life-changing experience" thing has been done many, many times already. And Wikus was quite the shallow asshole, as in "the writer and director are clubbing us over the head with examples of it". As for his "change of heart", little real change was exhibited until way late in the story. Up to that point, yes, he wanted back his wife and the shallow, protected life provided by his marriage to the daughter of a powerful man, but that's a motivation that is self-serving. Pretty much completely missing from the story was the dramatic catalyst that would cause such an asshole to really change.
**** SPOILER ALERT ******
Yes, Wikus finally makes a meaningful change, exhibited by his selfless actions in the last scene, but that was inconsistent with the character up to this point. There was nothing in the story that would have shown the protagonist as starting to see the injustice of everything he had done and stood for. They had the opportunity, in the MNU med lab. The dramatic tension that came about as the alien wandered about, realizing the sickening truth about what had gone on there, was completely squandered as the story blew right past the moment in favor of another flashy CGI shoot-em-up. The story has several such points, where the protagonist might have reached this moral denouement, but it never really executed.
I have seen none of those on your list, but I have seen "District 9". IMO, it won't take much for one of the others to top it.
I'm sorry, but once you get past the "apartheid, only with aliens this time" metaphor (which is difficult to do because the movie clubs you over the head with it every fifteen minutes), there just isn't much story, and what there is, is pretty trite. Same goes for the characters.
Yes, the CGI effects were astoundingly good. Best I've ever seen, but special effects to not a great movie make.
Er..., no. If this was Windows, you'd never have heard of it, period. Until, that it is, MS got around to fixing it or an exploit in the wild got everyone's attention.
You're missing the point. "Sky fairy" comments are just another form of the "pouncing" I was talking about.
Look, I have certain spiritual beliefs. They are deeply held and a central part of my life, but if I were stupid enough to drag them into a debate about the kind of things that are discussed in this forum, I would expect to be roundly derided... for my stupidity, not my beliefs. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but the whole "attack on Christianity" (or whatever dogmatic religion) thing is just a canard put forth every time some reason-challenged dullard has his ass handed to him for citing scripture in defense of his position. Lots of folks, especially here, are keenly aware of that and, reasonably, have no patience for it.
VP of Engineering: "Dude, they're going to find out, and they'll be pissed."
VP of Marketing: "This is going to be great. Think of all the things we could do with this information. Think of all the people we could sell that information to. The feature stays."
...This is not about preaching, this is about setting up an Us vs. Them attitude in the students, to make it easier to accept the irrational. After all, the other side is evil, they wouldn't have been so mean to them if they weren't, they must be wrong...
Exactly!
And we see that illustrated beautifully in the grandparent's post - "If you take the act of posting on a message board, especially one as hostile to religion as Slashdot..."
Slashdot is not intolerant of religion, per se. However, it can be brutally intolerant of badly reasoned arguments, articles of faith presented as proof, and other forms of stupidity. Only the most disingenuous tool would suggest that such a metaphorical "bringing a knife to a gun fight" as cut-and-pasting some lame intelligent design screed into a forum populated by those well-equipped to refute it's every point, is anything other than some form of "Martyrdom Light". Having seen the same pathetic arguments put forth time and again, often verbatim (cut-and-paste counts, remember), the forum regulars can be expected to pounce hard and fast. That's pretty much the definition of trolling, and it has nothing to do with intelligent discourse.
Weird indeed. I am continuously baffled by the hordes of sheep that can be so easily whipped up into a fearful frenzy that they will repeatedly act (vote) against their own best interests.
As for corruption, that's a strong word, and while it is quite often appropriate when applied to corporate behavior, let's not forget that it is the corporation's job to produce profit for it's shareholders. If a corporation can funnel money into politics to gain favorable treatment, and get away with it (legally or not), it has a fiduciary responsibility to do so. Attributing any other motivation (or likely direction) to corporate behavior is a fool's errand. It is the job of the government to ensure that corporations play by the rules, all of them. It is the electorate's job to elect representatives who will represent their interests by making appropriate rules and enforcing them. That ain't happening much these days.
...or spelling tests?
I expect bloggers to go nuts about this sort of thing. What's truly disheartening to me is that a formerly relevant news site like cnn.com has it on their front page. Oh CNN, I remember when you used to report actual news...now look what you've become.
Waxing all a-twitter over twitter is beneath a real news organization (like CNN once was) but giving air every day to a mentally unstable tool like Lou Dobbs is much more troubling.
Dude, You are one sick bastard...
...and you made me laugh, hard. It's probably well that I never had kids. Yours are in for a rough stretch.
Please post the videos to YouTube.
Your point is valid, even if your assertion that Reagan was responsible for the fall of the Soviet Empire is badly off the mark.
I believe that all the arm flapping and orange-alerting about "the terrorists" was much more about cover for political maneuvering (raiding the national treasury for one's cronies) than "keeping us safe".
And Lech Walesa and Charlie Wilson had a hell of a lot more to do with when the inevitable fall of the Soviet Union actually took place than Reagan ever did. Read your history.
It seems at this point like Facebook's plan was to make people think that it was an indispensable part of their lives and then abuse them like this because they know most users still won't quit.
There, fixed it for you.
It can not be stated too often or too forcefully. If you are stupid enough to put anything you might consider to be even remotely private onto a network that is accessible to a sizable chunk of the world's population (i.e., a potentially very public place), then you really shouldn't be surprised when that thing turns up as a subject of discussion on Slashdot. Not that I'm complaining about some of the "should have been kept in the shoe box" stuff that has hit the net, but STFU with the whining about privacy already.
But it's OK for those same western countries to suppress/fine/jail Christian theologians who preach that homosexuality is a sin?
Well..., no. It wouldn't be, if that's what was actually happening. Preaching that this or that arbitrary behavior is a sin is, in my country at least, protected speech. Always has been and, I pray, always will be. On the other hand, inciting violence against such "sinners" is not, and should be prosecuted with all the vigor the law allows.
BTW, constitutionally protected speech is not a guarantee that the speaker is entitled to any given platform, so if you're thinking of some recent homophobic beauty pageant hypocrite being handed her walking papers, try again.
...and I mean that literally. When I read that a modern western country has enacted a law that allows for the prosecution of the "crime" of "blasphemy", I got a cold chill down my spine. What's next? Imprisonment and torture for various forms of heresy?
WTF?
You assume every administration doesn't wipe its ass with the Constitution in one way or another.
I make no such assumption. Lincoln and FDR come immediately to mind. Nevertheless, I challenge you to submit any credible case from recent history, let's say as far back as Nixon, that represents a contempt and disregard for The Constitution anywhere near as egregious as that of the Bush/Cheney regime.
Yoo's name was attached to many of the most important briefs and memos, but it was David Addington, working on behalf of Cheney, who most directly put these disgraceful events in motion. Yoo is now at Berkeley (one notes with no small sense of irony).
Then you need to expand your knowledge. "The Dark Side", by Jane Mayer would be a good start, though I doubt highly that you will expend the effort, because it would threaten your narrow and comfortable view of the world.
/., for it is utterly without supporting facts. Indeed, more than one U.S. citizen was detained and denied their rights as citizens with nothing more than the disingenuous process of a handful of lawyers drafting documents telling the President he could do pretty much anything he wanted when it came to "terrorists". Add to these few, (most of which, BTW, are probably quite guilty of the crimes they were suspected of), the thousands of other so-called "enemy combatants" who have also been denied their rights under U.S. and international law and you have an episode in U.S. history that is cause for national shame.
Your assumption that the Bush administration did not wipe it's ass with The Constitution of the United States deserves all the derision it is likely to get here on
Ours is a nation of laws. Those laws, and the principles of liberty and justice that are their underpinnings, recognize no exigency that justifies a government official systematically ignoring those laws. No, not one. And before you dream up some Jack Bauer hypothetical, ticking-clock scenario, read the first sentence in the paragraph again and note the word "systematically". I rather doubt that history nor the courts would judge anyone to harshly for taking whatever action was necessary in such a far-fetched scenario, but that facts are that such was not the scenario. There was only the realization that, despite abundant intelligence that would have pointed the way, the intelligence and law enforcement arms of our government failed badly in the days leading up to 9/11. With this realization came the almost paranoid conviction that "they will hit us again" and the panic-driven actions of a powerful few to prevent that at any cost. The subsequent list of failures to defend, and insults to, The Constitution are well documented and far too many to list here, but the do most certainly, include the illegal interception of the private communications of U.S. citizens. Seriously, put down the neo-con fanboy kool-aid, stop watching Fox News, and see for yourself.
So I am to understand that a large part of this mission is to put "Kibo" in orbit...
James Parry must be doubled over with laughter right about now.
When somebody tells you that a corporation is considered a person, that person is talking out of their ass.
Actually, no. They might well be citing established case law, including SCOTUS decisions, that very clearly bestow personhood on corporations.
Here is your reading assignment... http://www.reclaimdemocracy.org/personhood/
Do the names Enron or Halliburton mean anything to you?
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss...
Only the palms change. The greasing goes on regardless. Vote for candidates who support real campaign finance reform of see this pattern repeated endlessly.