Actually it looks like you don't even have to knock the troops to be modded troll any more. Simply mentioning Fallujah seems to have done the trick. There's a real problem across the pond, huh?
Actually I'm 33 and it annoys the hell out of me too. =P And although I was once a reporter, I'm neither mild-mannered nor have I ever worked for the Daily Planet. I wouldn't be surprised if the percentage of non-teens that can hear it is well inside double figures. So like most crowd control mechanisms the 'collateral damage' of that damn whine is less discussed than the oft-hyped perceived benefits. And at the opposite end of the spectrum here's a relatively recent and remarkably relevant Ask Slashdot from a kid being harrassed with it by his elderly neighbour. One has to wonder if/when civilians will adopt a similar strategy with regard to the parent story and start pumping out their own mm waves at will.
The problem is that the people who were tested were told ahead of time to remove glasses, contact lenses, and any metal that could generate "hot spots". I really doubt they're going to extend the same courtesy to dissidents in a war zone. They're also assuming that the average grunt in the field is going to properly operate the equipment.
Precisely. If I hadn't just burned through a batch of mod points that'd get one from me.
White phosphorous is a chemical weapon issued to US forces so that it can be used for smoke screen purposes. However since it has historically also been used as a particularly nasty incendiary weapon, some of the more 'enterprising' elements of those same US forces have used it as an offensive weapon - most notably against civilians in Fallujah. I'm not trying to blame the so highly lauded US soldiers here - I know what that'll get me thanks - but I am trying to reiterate that soldiers under high stress on the battlefield will use whatever tools you give them without necessarily taking the ethics arguments into account at all - and who could blame them? The same logic of course extends to law enforcement and so-called "crowd control".
That's why it's all the more important that governments, international legislative bodies and military/law enforcement authorities keep themselves and each other in check and only issue such weapons under situations of absolute necessity if at all. Any power or weapon issued to anyone will some day be abused. The more powerful, potentially unethical and/or just plain nasty that power or weapon the more grave the risk to innocents.
So it's imperative that we, you know - the people, do everything we can to keep these things out of their hands.
So, e-mail clients should be programmed to automatically respond to EVERY message they get (or at the very least, every message flagged as spam) with an ad-libbed "O rly? tell me more", unless the e-mail came from a known-good mailing list or contact. Result: If even 1% of recipients responded and didn't buy, the signal-to-noise ratio at the bastard's inbox plunges by a factor of a hundred. Everybody responds, and spam-friendly ISPs implode under a digital tsunami of replies. The SOB pumping out 100 million messages can't possibly sort out the 1000 buyers from the 99,999,000 fakes.
I don't think spammers read the replies - at least they'd be fools if they did. They don't typically expect any useful replies - they're simply acting on behalf of a third party either raising the profile of its brand or promoting some offer. I personally find it more fruitful to go after the organisation being advertised. If someone is touting Viagra, get in touch with the highest marketing authority you can at Pfizer. If someone is selling cheap watches, go to the website where you can buy the watch, go through the process and find out where your money would go and/or who owns the domains etc. Then follow the chain back up to someone who might give a damn and give them a really hard time. If everyone did that it'd be far more effective than replying to the spam mails.:)
OK if the word deuterium sounds too much like a physics lesson for you, does heavy water sound any friendlier?;-)
In case skipping down a couple of paragraphs is also too 'lessony' here's the bit you're after:
Thus, it would take a week of drinking nothing but pure heavy water for a human to begin to feel ill, and 10 days to 2 weeks (depending on water intake) for severe poisoning and death.
The kid can obtain the stuff because he's not afraid of physics lessons. =P
John F. Kennedy's Address at Rice University on the Space Effort (September 12, 1962):
For the eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond, and we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but by a banner of freedom and peace. We have vowed that we shall not see space filled with weapons of mass destruction, but with instruments of knowledge and understanding.
I now feel obliged to post that every time people talk about weapons in space.
You know what this means. In years to come people will say that Al Gore invented commercial space travel. Of course we'll tell our kids that really all he did was use his position of power and influence as a means to assist in its growth.;)
I dunno, I've lived in Britain my whole life, and I feel like over the last few years it's moved from 18-25 year olds that I feel in the most danger from to the gangs of 13-16 year olds.
Just by way of reference, according to this pdf:"Firearms are used in a very small proportion of all recorded crimes. Including air weapons, firearms were
used in 0.40 per cent of all recorded crimes in 2001/02. Firearms other than air weapons were used in 0.18
per cent of all recorded crimes."
It should also be noted that the BBC article you quoted was written entirely by an American with a book out: "Joyce Malcolm, Professor of History, Bentley College, US. Author of Guns & Violence: the English Experience. Senior Advisor, MIT Security Studies Program"
We British people do so love learning about guns and the "English Experience" from pro-gun Americans.;-)
In other words, published by the BBC it may be, but it's also a gun lobbyist's sales pitch on the idea of Brits embracing american gun culture so please don't take it out of context and please don't take it as any indication of the British culture and/or its attitude towards guns.
The simple fact of the matter is that, by and large, we don't like guns here. We don't like people having guns and we don't even like our police force to have guns. If we had our way the army would still be equipped with swords, which you can still run away from by the way.;-)
The reason this story was both shocking and "noteworthy" was because the views expressed by Ms. Malcolm and her ilk are anathema to most Brits. We may well experience three murders a day on average in this country of roughly 65 million but I suspect that very, very few of them involve innocent children being shot on the street.
"Its" is possessive. I know it's no big deal but I just couldn't resist reminding everyone that virtually every story posted here is written sloppily and goes entirely unedited these days. =/
OK - you are just as nutty. 8) For what it's worth I appreciate Heinlein's work and his place in the history of science fiction but I don't rate him anywhere near as highly as you clearly assumed to be the case. For someone that professes such profound literary wisdom and insight you didn't do a terribly good job of reading my post. I was made curious about your opinion by the concentration of vitriol found in your post. I now see that the whole pretentious meal can't be separated from its vitriolic sauce.
If you yourself "truly appreciated books, language and writing instead of cleaving into your" own self-important projections and assumptions you'd think about yourself critically and would unescapably come to the same conclusion.;-)
If you start off on a premise far from that of the mainstream i.e. this extremely popular classic science fiction author is a "vile, talentless hack being given an opportunity to commit further crimes against literature and the English language twenty years after his long-overdue demise" then it might be an idea to qualify that statement with something a bit more worthwhile than "he is atrocious." In other words, don't tell us you hate him. Explain to the dear readers why you hate him. For they might otherwise take you to be as nutty as he was.;-)
I know that slashdot is a site where you can keep up on current world affairs and such. But if the police hadn't done the DNA tests or had the title not had DNA in it would this article even be up?
Probably not. But that's kinda the point. These minors were accused - not convicted - of a fairly trivial public offense and subsequently treated as adult criminals. For most, that in itself is more than enough reason to scream about it everywhere and anywhere. However the fact that taking and storing of DNA samples of anyone arrested under any circumstances - including innocent children - is par for the course over here in the UK is, in my opinion, undeniably horrific. Anyone that gives a damn about privacy - hell, anyone that gives a damn about humanity and the abuse of science and technology really should give a shit. I'd really like to think that my fellow slashdotters come under that category.
Excuse me if I missed the big story, but the USA hasn't banned Islam or corporate worship. I can't think of another country that is more tolerant of religious freedom than the US, wackos included.
I can't argue with that. You guys even elect them!;-)
Seriously though, as soon as I read the line "using hypnosis in a laboratory" the plausible-interest part of my brain shut off and my eyes glazed over. Recreate THAT in a laboratory.
My thoughts exactly. Since when did data gathered from hynposis or 'hypnotised' patients make its way into the lab? Even hypnotists admit that the discipline involves suggestion. Subjects' responses are usually compatible with the expectations of those around them - the data is tainted. Find a biochemical way of triggering a neurological deja-vu response and I'm interested.
From the article: The Leeds team set out to create a sense of deja vu among volunteers in a lab.
They used hypnosis to trigger only the second part of the recognition process - hoping to create a sense of familiarity about something a person had not seen before.
The researchers showed volunteers 24 common words, then hypnotised them and told them that when they were next presented with a word in a red frame, they would feel that the word was familiar, although they would not know when they last saw it.
Green frames would make them think that the word belonged to the original list of 24.
After being taken out of hypnosis, the volunteers were presented with a series of words in frames of various colours, including some that were not in the original 24 and which were framed in red or green.
Of the 18 people studied so far, 10 reported a peculiar sensation when they saw new words in red frames and five said it definitely felt like deja vu.
I suppose science - or at least its standards - must have changed a lot since I was in school.
I'm not trolling - we're in the same boat. We still have a few MS machines in our company but we've been slowly getting rid of them over the last couple of years. With Vista, Windows Genuine "Advantage" etc., MS licensing paranoia etc. it's pretty self-evident that simply owning Microsoft licenses is an increasing risk - not to mention added burden on your IT team. Dump them. The alternatives are there and it's definitely worth it, if only to be free from the yoke of oppression.;-)
...or am I the only person who immediately thinks, "Who the hell cares?!" when I see the phrase "Virtual Economy" in a Slashdot article's title.
It's just you. Or it's just you and a handful of like-minded folk that aren't quite dull enough to tell all of us quite how dull they themselves find it. A good number of us however are much more interested in the topic than reading about the people that aren't. =P
I'm not having a dig at the parent but I just wanted to use that quote to illustrate a point.
According to MMORPG.com there are over a hundred MMO's active at the moment with another 90+ in development and/or in testing but I've lost count of the times that I've seen articles and comments here and elsewhere that seem to use the subjective experiences of a handful of games - usually the most hyped ones - as some kind of general indicator of the entire marketplace.
Almost all of the complaints made about these major MMO's have been addressed in dozens of these others - some were even specifically developed in order to approach some of the issues differently.
Can we please be a little bit less blinkered when talking about this space?
After all it wouldn't make sense to only talk about MacOS and Windows when talking about operating systems, now would it?
Listen up, guys, WoW has 5.5 million+ subscribers because what it's doing is good, not bad.
Reality TV gets a lot of viewers - as does Fox News for that matter. McDonalds sells a lot of burgers. The Da Vinci Code book/movie/hype train is sheer nonsense yet it's taken millions already. This is not because what these ventures are doing is good per se - it's because they've been designed to reach out to the lowest common denominators in order to have a broad appeal.
It's not dumbed down, and if - like me - you spent hardcore-style hours raiding to get the best stuff, you'd know that.
Oh I beg your pardon - I thought you were talking about WoW but clearly I must have misunderstood.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually it looks like you don't even have to knock the troops to be modded troll any more. Simply mentioning Fallujah seems to have done the trick. There's a real problem across the pond, huh?
Actually I'm 33 and it annoys the hell out of me too. =P And although I was once a reporter, I'm neither mild-mannered nor have I ever worked for the Daily Planet. I wouldn't be surprised if the percentage of non-teens that can hear it is well inside double figures. So like most crowd control mechanisms the 'collateral damage' of that damn whine is less discussed than the oft-hyped perceived benefits. And at the opposite end of the spectrum here's a relatively recent and remarkably relevant Ask Slashdot from a kid being harrassed with it by his elderly neighbour. One has to wonder if/when civilians will adopt a similar strategy with regard to the parent story and start pumping out their own mm waves at will.
Precisely. If I hadn't just burned through a batch of mod points that'd get one from me.
White phosphorous is a chemical weapon issued to US forces so that it can be used for smoke screen purposes. However since it has historically also been used as a particularly nasty incendiary weapon, some of the more 'enterprising' elements of those same US forces have used it as an offensive weapon - most notably against civilians in Fallujah. I'm not trying to blame the so highly lauded US soldiers here - I know what that'll get me thanks - but I am trying to reiterate that soldiers under high stress on the battlefield will use whatever tools you give them without necessarily taking the ethics arguments into account at all - and who could blame them? The same logic of course extends to law enforcement and so-called "crowd control".
That's why it's all the more important that governments, international legislative bodies and military/law enforcement authorities keep themselves and each other in check and only issue such weapons under situations of absolute necessity if at all. Any power or weapon issued to anyone will some day be abused. The more powerful, potentially unethical and/or just plain nasty that power or weapon the more grave the risk to innocents.
So it's imperative that we, you know - the people, do everything we can to keep these things out of their hands.
OK if the word deuterium sounds too much like a physics lesson for you, does heavy water sound any friendlier?
In case skipping down a couple of paragraphs is also too 'lessony' here's the bit you're after:The kid can obtain the stuff because he's not afraid of physics lessons. =P
Yeah! I mean how the hell are we supposed to debunk vaporware if the even hype is vapor! =D
John F. Kennedy's Address at Rice University on the Space Effort (September 12, 1962):
I now feel obliged to post that every time people talk about weapons in space.
You know what this means. In years to come people will say that Al Gore invented commercial space travel. Of course we'll tell our kids that really all he did was use his position of power and influence as a means to assist in its growth. ;)
Geeks + Testosterone = Tearful Ending
Just by way of reference, according to this pdf :"Firearms are used in a very small proportion of all recorded crimes. Including air weapons, firearms were
used in 0.40 per cent of all recorded crimes in 2001/02. Firearms other than air weapons were used in 0.18
per cent of all recorded crimes."
It should also be noted that the BBC article you quoted was written entirely by an American with a book out: "Joyce Malcolm, Professor of History, Bentley College, US. Author of Guns & Violence: the English Experience. Senior Advisor, MIT Security Studies Program"
;-)
;-)
We British people do so love learning about guns and the "English Experience" from pro-gun Americans.
In other words, published by the BBC it may be, but it's also a gun lobbyist's sales pitch on the idea of Brits embracing american gun culture so please don't take it out of context and please don't take it as any indication of the British culture and/or its attitude towards guns.
The simple fact of the matter is that, by and large, we don't like guns here. We don't like people having guns and we don't even like our police force to have guns. If we had our way the army would still be equipped with swords, which you can still run away from by the way.
The reason this story was both shocking and "noteworthy" was because the views expressed by Ms. Malcolm and her ilk are anathema to most Brits.
We may well experience three murders a day on average in this country of roughly 65 million but I suspect that very, very few of them involve innocent children being shot on the street.
Apparently so. AC takes the prize. =P
"Its" is possessive. I know it's no big deal but I just couldn't resist reminding everyone that virtually every story posted here is written sloppily and goes entirely unedited these days. =/
Damn. I missed a pertinent SIC opportunity! =D
OK - you are just as nutty. 8) For what it's worth I appreciate Heinlein's work and his place in the history of science fiction but I don't rate him anywhere near as highly as you clearly assumed to be the case. For someone that professes such profound literary wisdom and insight you didn't do a terribly good job of reading my post. I was made curious about your opinion by the concentration of vitriol found in your post. I now see that the whole pretentious meal can't be separated from its vitriolic sauce.
;-)
If you yourself "truly appreciated books, language and writing instead of cleaving into your" own self-important projections and assumptions you'd think about yourself critically and would unescapably come to the same conclusion.
If you start off on a premise far from that of the mainstream i.e. this extremely popular classic science fiction author is a "vile, talentless hack being given an opportunity to commit further crimes against literature and the English language twenty years after his long-overdue demise" then it might be an idea to qualify that statement with something a bit more worthwhile than "he is atrocious." In other words, don't tell us you hate him. Explain to the dear readers why you hate him. For they might otherwise take you to be as nutty as he was. ;-)
I know that slashdot is a site where you can keep up on current world affairs and such. But if the police hadn't done the DNA tests or had the title not had DNA in it would this article even be up?
Probably not. But that's kinda the point. These minors were accused - not convicted - of a fairly trivial public offense and subsequently treated as adult criminals. For most, that in itself is more than enough reason to scream about it everywhere and anywhere. However the fact that taking and storing of DNA samples of anyone arrested under any circumstances - including innocent children - is par for the course over here in the UK is, in my opinion, undeniably horrific. Anyone that gives a damn about privacy - hell, anyone that gives a damn about humanity and the abuse of science and technology really should give a shit. I'd really like to think that my fellow slashdotters come under that category.
Excuse me if I missed the big story, but the USA hasn't banned Islam or corporate worship. I can't think of another country that is more tolerant of religious freedom than the US, wackos included.
;-)
I can't argue with that. You guys even elect them!
Seriously though, as soon as I read the line "using hypnosis in a laboratory" the plausible-interest part of my brain shut off and my eyes glazed over. Recreate THAT in a laboratory.
My thoughts exactly. Since when did data gathered from hynposis or 'hypnotised' patients make its way into the lab? Even hypnotists admit that the discipline involves suggestion. Subjects' responses are usually compatible with the expectations of those around them - the data is tainted. Find a biochemical way of triggering a neurological deja-vu response and I'm interested.
From the article:
The Leeds team set out to create a sense of deja vu among volunteers in a lab.
They used hypnosis to trigger only the second part of the recognition process - hoping to create a sense of familiarity about something a person had not seen before.
The researchers showed volunteers 24 common words, then hypnotised them and told them that when they were next presented with a word in a red frame, they would feel that the word was familiar, although they would not know when they last saw it.
Green frames would make them think that the word belonged to the original list of 24.
After being taken out of hypnosis, the volunteers were presented with a series of words in frames of various colours, including some that were not in the original 24 and which were framed in red or green.
Of the 18 people studied so far, 10 reported a peculiar sensation when they saw new words in red frames and five said it definitely felt like deja vu.
I suppose science - or at least its standards - must have changed a lot since I was in school.
I'm not trolling - we're in the same boat. We still have a few MS machines in our company but we've been slowly getting rid of them over the last couple of years. With Vista, Windows Genuine "Advantage" etc., MS licensing paranoia etc. it's pretty self-evident that simply owning Microsoft licenses is an increasing risk - not to mention added burden on your IT team. Dump them. The alternatives are there and it's definitely worth it, if only to be free from the yoke of oppression. ;-)
...or am I the only person who immediately thinks, "Who the hell cares?!" when I see the phrase "Virtual Economy" in a Slashdot article's title.
It's just you. Or it's just you and a handful of like-minded folk that aren't quite dull enough to tell all of us quite how dull they themselves find it. A good number of us however are much more interested in the topic than reading about the people that aren't. =P
I have played AO, SWG, COH, and WoW.
I'm not having a dig at the parent but I just wanted to use that quote to illustrate a point.
According to MMORPG.com there are over a hundred MMO's active at the moment with another 90+ in development and/or in testing but I've lost count of the times that I've seen articles and comments here and elsewhere that seem to use the subjective experiences of a handful of games - usually the most hyped ones - as some kind of general indicator of the entire marketplace.
Almost all of the complaints made about these major MMO's have been addressed in dozens of these others - some were even specifically developed in order to approach some of the issues differently.
Can we please be a little bit less blinkered when talking about this space?
After all it wouldn't make sense to only talk about MacOS and Windows when talking about operating systems, now would it?
Don't complain. Shop around.
Listen up, guys, WoW has 5.5 million+ subscribers because what it's doing is good, not bad.
Reality TV gets a lot of viewers - as does Fox News for that matter. McDonalds sells a lot of burgers. The Da Vinci Code book/movie/hype train is sheer nonsense yet it's taken millions already. This is not because what these ventures are doing is good per se - it's because they've been designed to reach out to the lowest common denominators in order to have a broad appeal.
It's not dumbed down, and if - like me - you spent hardcore-style hours raiding to get the best stuff, you'd know that.
Oh I beg your pardon - I thought you were talking about WoW but clearly I must have misunderstood.