See, here's the thing. Brave New World is mostly a dystopian book, but that society had several good ideas among the dross. One of them was that people should be allowed to do the work that they like to do.
In the book, what people liked to do was programmed into them from birth, but that isn't the case with these surveys. So, seems fine to me.
This includes the requirement of providing a consumer choice mechanism, which has been implemented for the industry at www.aboutads.info.
I looked at those links, and there's nothing about a requirement to provide and implement that mechanism. They use phrases like "participating companies" and "best practices and guidelines," and so far, the only thing they "promote the use of" is an icon linking to data-collection policies.
Maybe they'll toughen up later — they have text saying as much — but not yet.
Yeah, this makes sense. If you set up a situation where you try to make someone break a law in order to get them in trouble for breaking a lawâ¦when cops do that, it is called entrapment, and I doubt the court would look any more kindly on entrapment by a civilian than on entrapment by a police officer.
There was a novella called "The Green Leopard Plague" that goes into the idea of humans that photosynthesize humans in more detail.
Other posters have pointed out that we don't have a food production problem; we have a food distribution problem. The novel points out the main advantage of wide-spread photosynthesis: no dictator would be able to hold his people hostage through their food supply. There would no longer be any benefit to screwing with normal food distribution if a person could meet their base metabolic needs by sitting outside.
Just look at the incredible amount of violence shown in children's cartoons (Tom&Jerry, Road Runner, etc)
These two cartoons were from the 50s and 60s. What has that got to do with violence today? These days, the only children's cartoons that spring to mind are Spongebob Squarepants and Avatar: The Last Airbender. They aren't at all violent in comparison.
or your average Hollywood movie (the cinema massacre was nothing compared to the on-screen violence by the "hero" Batman).
First, it was an action movie. There are whole genres of Hollywood movie that aren't action movies.
Second, did you see that movie? Batman hardly committed any violence at all. He was, in fact, either retired or incapacitated for over half of it. And, of course, Batman doesn't shoot people — it's one of his defining characteristics — so that last parenthetical is just laughably wrong.
I think his "50 year" number is a bit odd, as it's based on absolutely no foundation, other than a few loose correlations. Instead, he should model it like you do for animal patterns: generational trends. It makes a lot of sense that violence would peak every two generations... which these days, is about every 50 years.
Did you even read what you wrote? The "50 year" number is from generational trends. He called it the "father-son" cycle.
There is the argument that you can create any paradox you like in time travel, so long as you the time traveller don't know that it would be paradoxical. Basically, anything in your personal light-cone is known, and anything outside is unknown and can change without notice if the universe needs to do so in order to keep things consistent within your light-cone.
So if you time-travel to some point where you've been or will be, try to avoid seeing yourself. Because if you can see yourself, you can't go off the rails. But if you can't see yourself, you have total freedom.
I can't remember the novel that elaborated on this idea, but it's heady one. But unfortunately, as I recall, it mostly only works at interstellar distances.
Don't the global warming alamists claim a 2 degree increase in the next 100 years? You had to "plan ahead for that"?
That's the average worldwide increase. In actuality, it'll be highly variable from region to region. Some places will get colder, some more will get hotter, all will get nastier weather, some will flood, some will go dry. It really is more "climate change" than "global warming."
Reconciliation is legal. There are a lot of Congressional procedural rules that suck. But they are there, nonetheless, waiting for someone to use them.
Oh, trust me. Animals are not pure and noble. They do the same shit we do, but they do it with only the gifts God gave them. Dolphins rape, baboons terrorize their underlings, birds get into pissing matches, they all ostracize the different, and they do these things both with and without good cause. Just like us.
You need to be more specific with your Christianity. Southern churches were all for slavery or segregation. They read the Bible such that blacks were inherently inferior and made that way by God as part of his plan. Northern churches felt differently.
The correct response to this illusion of choice is to give us back choice, not to merely get rid of the illusion. Ditch the incentives to tie insurance to employment.
What incentives are these? No one wants to tie insurance to employment. But a company is the only way to get a group rate, at least until the Obamacare health care exchange provisions come into effect by 2014.
If government is paying for your health care, they make the rules covering your health care. Note ELECTED officials, mind you, but those appointed by various "super committees" whose members are also appointed and not responsible to voters.
So then obviously the solution is too make these officials elected. Like my local insurance commissioner.
How long do you think it will be before the committees realize that tax dollars are paying for cancer treatments because someone chose to smoke? How long before the outrage over the billions spent on heart medication because these people are too lazy to exercise and don't have the self control to stay away from cup cakes?
Already the case. Smoking? Heart medication? These all crop up later in life. And are covered by my tax dollars, in the form of Medicare. Basically, this has already been the scenario my entire life. Where's the outrage?
How long before treatment depends on your government mandated health lifestyle score and how do you think that score will be determined?
I am not being scored now, am I? And my treatment once I hit retirement is not being determined by my health habits now, is it?
But by your arguments, all of this should have already taken place in the years since the Baby Boomers have really started to impact the financial bottom line. It hasn't. You are fear-mongering.
The first thing that you never get is that it is a fall back system. It is a very good fall back system but plenty of people still pay for better private care.
Health insurance is not a fallback system in the US; it is the only system, unless you are among the very rich. Private care is too expensive. That is why the debate is so fierce and alarmist. We only have the one basket for all our eggs.
I've always assumed that NYCL was working on these cases that he reports. I mean, come on — he is a copyright lawyer, these are copyright cases, lawyers in a field work on cases in the same field. It was clearly a possibility.
"Full disclosure" is only relevant when a person might be expected to report on something objectively, but actually has a hidden bias or conflict of interest. NYCL's biases are anything but hidden, and anyway Slashdot is not the place for objective journalism.
Guess who is going to be around in a hundred years? My money's on the boot maker.
This is a stupid analogy.
First, the boot maker has already been around for three centuries, and so could very well be around for a century more. But if some new guy wanted to start up a boot-making business today? Odds are against him having the same three centuries of success to look forward to.
Second, no online business will ever last for a century. There won't even be an Internet as we know it in a century. Physical manufacturing and an online business are more different than apples and oranges, they are more like...apples and microwave dinners.
I'm not sure, but it seems you are willfully ignoring different typing schemes. Static, manifest typing (where variables "have type") versus dynamic typing (where values "have type") is more well-defined than you make it appear.
I would say, for a beginner, manifest typing is obviously the right choice compared to the alternative — which I will call invisible typing.
Python-style dynamic typing sucks. Unless you can look at a piece of code and see what the types should be and thus what operations are available, you're coding by guesswork. It is a deplorable habit.
Another deplorable Python habit is haphazardly adding members to objects. You're going to end up with name collisions and randomly replace data that other code is expecting to find there with something the other code knows naught of.
And while it does not instill deplorable habits, Python's super() function sucks rocks. And why the fuck doesn't Python have a switch statement!?
tl;dr Python ain't all that. Don't use it as a first language.
Slashdot Mirror
Is it fine? No. Is it due process? Yes.
You must always be careful to separate the concepts of "legal" and "moral." They are not the same.
The rest of the world is filled with idiots, like the rest of the country, and they will screw things up so that you cannot live as you choose.
O brave new world, that has such people in it
See, here's the thing. Brave New World is mostly a dystopian book, but that society had several good ideas among the dross. One of them was that people should be allowed to do the work that they like to do.
In the book, what people liked to do was programmed into them from birth, but that isn't the case with these surveys. So, seems fine to me.
Come on, you know it's true.
I looked at those links, and there's nothing about a requirement to provide and implement that mechanism. They use phrases like "participating companies" and "best practices and guidelines," and so far, the only thing they "promote the use of" is an icon linking to data-collection policies.
Maybe they'll toughen up later — they have text saying as much — but not yet.
Yeah, this makes sense. If you set up a situation where you try to make someone break a law in order to get them in trouble for breaking a lawâ¦when cops do that, it is called entrapment, and I doubt the court would look any more kindly on entrapment by a civilian than on entrapment by a police officer.
There was a novella called "The Green Leopard Plague" that goes into the idea of humans that photosynthesize humans in more detail.
Other posters have pointed out that we don't have a food production problem; we have a food distribution problem. The novel points out the main advantage of wide-spread photosynthesis: no dictator would be able to hold his people hostage through their food supply. There would no longer be any benefit to screwing with normal food distribution if a person could meet their base metabolic needs by sitting outside.
These two cartoons were from the 50s and 60s. What has that got to do with violence today? These days, the only children's cartoons that spring to mind are Spongebob Squarepants and Avatar: The Last Airbender. They aren't at all violent in comparison.
First, it was an action movie. There are whole genres of Hollywood movie that aren't action movies.
Second, did you see that movie? Batman hardly committed any violence at all. He was, in fact, either retired or incapacitated for over half of it. And, of course, Batman doesn't shoot people — it's one of his defining characteristics — so that last parenthetical is just laughably wrong.
I think his "50 year" number is a bit odd, as it's based on absolutely no foundation, other than a few loose correlations. Instead, he should model it like you do for animal patterns: generational trends. It makes a lot of sense that violence would peak every two generations... which these days, is about every 50 years.
Did you even read what you wrote? The "50 year" number is from generational trends. He called it the "father-son" cycle.
There is the argument that you can create any paradox you like in time travel, so long as you the time traveller don't know that it would be paradoxical. Basically, anything in your personal light-cone is known, and anything outside is unknown and can change without notice if the universe needs to do so in order to keep things consistent within your light-cone.
So if you time-travel to some point where you've been or will be, try to avoid seeing yourself. Because if you can see yourself, you can't go off the rails. But if you can't see yourself, you have total freedom.
I can't remember the novel that elaborated on this idea, but it's heady one. But unfortunately, as I recall, it mostly only works at interstellar distances.
Don't the global warming alamists claim a 2 degree increase in the next 100 years? You had to "plan ahead for that"?
That's the average worldwide increase. In actuality, it'll be highly variable from region to region. Some places will get colder, some more will get hotter, all will get nastier weather, some will flood, some will go dry. It really is more "climate change" than "global warming."
Reconciliation is legal. There are a lot of Congressional procedural rules that suck. But they are there, nonetheless, waiting for someone to use them.
Kinda. For those of us in developed nations, at least, we don't die too often, and we may compete sexually, but we often don't have kids if we win.
On a plate with fries, presumably.
I know you didn't just say the JavaScript is Zen-like!
That's it, I'm gettin' mah gun.
Oh, trust me. Animals are not pure and noble. They do the same shit we do, but they do it with only the gifts God gave them. Dolphins rape, baboons terrorize their underlings, birds get into pissing matches, they all ostracize the different, and they do these things both with and without good cause. Just like us.
Two insightful responses to this, but I have no mod points to award. :-(
If the Tea Party can't get it together enough to have someone sane represent them, then they don't have what it takes to be a contender.
I suppose that statement applies to the Republican Party, too...
You need to be more specific with your Christianity. Southern churches were all for slavery or segregation. They read the Bible such that blacks were inherently inferior and made that way by God as part of his plan. Northern churches felt differently.
The correct response to this illusion of choice is to give us back choice, not to merely get rid of the illusion. Ditch the incentives to tie insurance to employment.
What incentives are these? No one wants to tie insurance to employment. But a company is the only way to get a group rate, at least until the Obamacare health care exchange provisions come into effect by 2014.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_insurance_exchange
So then obviously the solution is too make these officials elected. Like my local insurance commissioner.
Already the case. Smoking? Heart medication? These all crop up later in life. And are covered by my tax dollars, in the form of Medicare. Basically, this has already been the scenario my entire life. Where's the outrage?
I am not being scored now, am I? And my treatment once I hit retirement is not being determined by my health habits now, is it?
But by your arguments, all of this should have already taken place in the years since the Baby Boomers have really started to impact the financial bottom line. It hasn't. You are fear-mongering.
Health insurance is not a fallback system in the US; it is the only system, unless you are among the very rich. Private care is too expensive. That is why the debate is so fierce and alarmist. We only have the one basket for all our eggs.
I've always assumed that NYCL was working on these cases that he reports. I mean, come on — he is a copyright lawyer, these are copyright cases, lawyers in a field work on cases in the same field. It was clearly a possibility.
"Full disclosure" is only relevant when a person might be expected to report on something objectively, but actually has a hidden bias or conflict of interest. NYCL's biases are anything but hidden, and anyway Slashdot is not the place for objective journalism.
Guess who is going to be around in a hundred years? My money's on the boot maker.
This is a stupid analogy.
First, the boot maker has already been around for three centuries, and so could very well be around for a century more. But if some new guy wanted to start up a boot-making business today? Odds are against him having the same three centuries of success to look forward to.
Second, no online business will ever last for a century. There won't even be an Internet as we know it in a century. Physical manufacturing and an online business are more different than apples and oranges, they are more like...apples and microwave dinners.
I would say, for a beginner, manifest typing is obviously the right choice compared to the alternative — which I will call invisible typing.
Python-style dynamic typing sucks. Unless you can look at a piece of code and see what the types should be and thus what operations are available, you're coding by guesswork. It is a deplorable habit.
Another deplorable Python habit is haphazardly adding members to objects. You're going to end up with name collisions and randomly replace data that other code is expecting to find there with something the other code knows naught of.
And while it does not instill deplorable habits, Python's super() function sucks rocks. And why the fuck doesn't Python have a switch statement!?
tl;dr Python ain't all that. Don't use it as a first language.