Yeah, I dont understand the market for this or the co-pilot products for other smartphones. For the same money I get a stand-alone GPS and I dont have to worry about an ugly cumbersome adapter, draining battery, wear and tear on my phone, not being able to do calls and gps at the same time, etc. Heck, Id rather have a thief take my $99 GPS than my iphone, which must cost $500 or so off-contract.
A couple of years ago GPS devices hit the 99 dollar mark. Prior to that I could see an argument for the co-pilot software/hardware, but right now this stuff seems pretty useless.
These types of studies come out pretty often, usually with the same hysterical tone. When you start talking about stuff in such tiny amounts then just about any substance can be found. There's cocaine in the air in many places if you go as low as parts per billion. There's uranium in the water. There's the ash of dead people in your air. There's fly eggs in your soup. There's pesticides in your baby's bottle.
If anything, this is more interesting in our ability to detect small amounts of things than a social statement.
Except Piper was a really weak album with cheesy production values and frankly, doesnt have the replay value of Sgt Peppers. I dont think Floyd really got their groove on until much, much later. Perhaps until they lost Barrett and released Dark Side of The Moon. YMMV.
The guy who is against condom use in Africa, runs his own country, believes non-christians deserve eternal torment, and walks around with a solid fucking gold staff while lamenting the world's poor?
Sorry, we dont need someone with a 13th century worldview telling us what to do. Between secular moralists, secular ethics boards, FDA, AMA, et al, we are doing fine thanks. Men in dresses who think they talk to the invisible men in the sky arent helping. In fact, historically they've only hurt society.
Not everything is a slippery slope. Not all technology leads to dystopia. In fact, these things are rare in an open society.
For instance, if you read the article the two women get 6 hours a sleep nightly. Err, I do that, but I prefer 7. I dont need 8-9 as the article suggests. Sure, they probably get better sleep then I do and feel more refreshed, but you inserted that gene into me it wont lead into any big changes.
This isnt exactly discovering a gene that can let us get by with 2 or 3 hours a night. Its shaving off maybe one. I wouldnt be surprised to find out that this gene really does fuck all for the average person.
>But UAC is Microsoft's answer to running as a non privileged user for the average end user, the default user is an admin
I disagree. UAC is a bandaid for those who dont want to run as user. If you want to run as user, guess what, run as user. Dont shoehorn the UAC into something its not and then criticize it for what it aint.
So wait, the "exploit" is to run untrusted code as admin? That is not a privilege escalation attack. How is this different than running any malicious code?
The business world would. Maybe in your little social circle of IM and twitter addicts you can do without email, but not in the real world where money exchanges hands. Guess which world hires all the email admins?
>But is this different from any other movement, organization, business or community in history?
Its not, but here on slashdot a lot of mom's basement nerds are experiencing this for the first time. I mean, how mature could the GP be? Using terms like "circle jerk" to describe an editing process is very much over the top. I just picture a lot of these guys as incredibly immature and having childish temper tantrums when they dont get what they want. Sadly, a lot of IT people just dont have good social or emotional skills, and we see this manifest itself on slashdot frequently. Immature mods mod them up, and every whiny complaint is suddenly +5 insightful while your excellent comment will go unnoticed or tagged as trolling.
>You want to know why Wikipedia is not growing? It's because the new pack of cyber nerds is defending it's territory.
You have no proof of this statement. You just have a jaded opinion.
Frankly, I like the change the wikipedia has done lately. A couple years ago the site was falling apart, full of anime-related trivia everywhere, shitty articles written by ignorant people, political bias, homeopathic BS in medical articles, etc. The current crop of editors and policies are actually working. If you hate it so much, look at the quality at alternative sites. Its not as good.
Sadly, this is the predictable outcome of so many large scale projects. The people who disagree just decry the site and wait for any criticisms then pull out their pet complaint. Its just not convincing. Perhaps its better to just walk away instead of walking away angry.
If they are not registered on the list then this law does not affect them. Yes, the web-based list shows all the registered offenders.
>The last thing I see as a major issue here is that they will attack the ones we have no problem depriving of their rights first, and when we let them do it to them they will eventually move on to us.
That's the classic slippery slope argument and the classic response is "Not all things lead to a slippery slope." For instance there's no national register of people who drive badly and if you cheat on your husband you dont need to wear a scarlet 'A.' Someone could argue that the former would help society. Some states force new drivers to have a "new driver" sticker in their car for a few months after getting a license, so its not unheard of, but we're not seeing slipperly slope effects like you suggest we might.
Other than urination in public isnt a sex crime in Illinois?
I live in Illinois and have done searches on sex offenders near me, and none of the charges are remotely comparable to your example. Lots of sexual assualt on a minor. A lot. At least half of them and Im not talking 19 yo guy with 17 year girl, but someone with a 10 or 11 year old. Illinois lists the ages of the victims. The rest are regular sexual assault and a few rape charges here and there.
While I have mixed feelings about sexual registrtion in general, I do not see it as the weirdo legal dystopia you suggest it is, at least in my state.
I dont like the characterization as these added charges as being superfluous or some kind of anti-justic conspiracy. Of course, all legislation can be abused but here in Illinois we tack on charges if you commit robbery with a gun as opposed to strong arm. Or if you beat someone half to death. Or whatever. It actually helps sentencing make more sense when applied correctly. The kid who ran into the Quickie-mart and stole a snickers bar after telling Apu he'll beat him up if he tried to stop him shouldnt do the time of the guy who pointed a loaded gun at Apu's head and then pistol-whipped him for a while.
If he got this information from a protected computer then he deserves the charge. If he instead got them by breaking into my house and going through my garbage then he would at least get criminal trespassing. I see no problem with this.
Not to mention that CCD is overplayed in the media. Yes, its real but its not exactly the bee rapture.
On top of that, bees are an evolutionary mess. They dont have the genetic variety to withstand a lot of nature's attacks like viruses and fungus, which are the most likely cause of CCD not this bullshit from the GP.
At this point E) is their best option. Humans must intervene to keeps bees going because mother nature is doing her best to kill them. Someone needs to teach the GP and his ilk that mankind/monsanto/pesticides arent the villians here, its good old mother nature herself.
Its also worth pointing out that the honey bee isnt even native to north America, so its an artificial situation to begin with. Nature doesnt want bees alive here. Again, its up to man and technology to keep them going.
No, its not news its slashdot. The editors realized we havent gotten our two minutes of hate today. How childish and predictable. No wonder no one takes this place even remotely seriously.
You dont know the alternative. If the AC is off then he has the windows open. If the windows are open, especially on the expressway, then the car has more drag. What's the loss then? I doubt the alternative to AC is sitting in the car with the windows closed for "the environment." Regardless, this guy owns a prius so even with the AC blasting he's doing better than 90% of the people out there.
>>major conflict between consumerism and environmentalism
No, youve just stated the problem with activists and idealists: You people are not practical, inviting, or informed.
>If you have the cheddar to drop $40k on a commuter car, you probably don't think twice about the price at the pump.
Well, there's supposedly a 7.5k rebate for this from the federal government. Lets say you live in a state that has a 2.5k rebate too, so lets assume 10k off. Now its a 30k car.
Granted, its not exactly cheap, but a lot of people can afford that as the average new car price in the US is 29k. You'll be saving in gas too. 85 cents in electricity to charge for 40 miles is $8.50 dollars for 400 miles, which is 2 tanks of gas on my saturn, which costs me $60-70 today. Thats hard city driving for my saturn, rural and suburban mileage will be better, but nothing close to the Volt.
>it has to lug around a heavy internal combustion engine
That tiny 1.0L engine that runs a generator? Id rather be able to put gas in it when I cannot find electricity, thanks. My neighborhood BP hasnt exactly switched over.
>Long range electric or efficient internal combustion. Please, please, pick one.
The battery tech isnt here. Perhaps you can wish for faeries to power the car while youre at it because youre being 100% irrational.
Hell, even if you do this, you still need to convince the gas stations to switch over, because you'll sometimes be in a situation where you need power, now, not overnight. Early adopters appreciate a little convenience.
All these companies need to pay for health insurance for all their full time employees. They dont get it via 20+% taxes like you do in Europe. So things cost more but you pay less taxes. I'll leave it up the reader which solution is best.
>The whole web app fad caught on largely because people are too dumb to care.
What? The web caught on because the alternatives like gopher or dumb terminals were terrible compared to being able to embed images and other content. Remember actually using gopher or archie or whatever? Or using a big ugly VMS thin client? Sure, people have nostalgia for this stuff, but its pretty obvious which technology was more marketable.
As far as the web revolution goes, well, I think we're just seeing the natural cheapness of people again. A lot of the web office apps are free, yet Office costs $99 for the student/home edition. Sure, putting these things on the web is putting another layer of junk between you and the code, but if the market consists of cheap people who dont care, then here we are.
Not to mention, you get some big advantages with web based apps. Sure, they'll be slower, but they can store all your documents. You never have to install anything other than a plugin once per browser. You may have 2 or 3 laptops in a typical family, yet everyone just logs into their google apps and does their work. Dad doesnt have to buy the family 5 pack for office.
I think geeks need to stop thinking about which solution is the better technical one and think in terms of markets. The computer industry exists within capitalism. Markets rule, not pedantic geeks arguing over the internet.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, I dont understand the market for this or the co-pilot products for other smartphones. For the same money I get a stand-alone GPS and I dont have to worry about an ugly cumbersome adapter, draining battery, wear and tear on my phone, not being able to do calls and gps at the same time, etc. Heck, Id rather have a thief take my $99 GPS than my iphone, which must cost $500 or so off-contract.
A couple of years ago GPS devices hit the 99 dollar mark. Prior to that I could see an argument for the co-pilot software/hardware, but right now this stuff seems pretty useless.
These types of studies come out pretty often, usually with the same hysterical tone. When you start talking about stuff in such tiny amounts then just about any substance can be found. There's cocaine in the air in many places if you go as low as parts per billion. There's uranium in the water. There's the ash of dead people in your air. There's fly eggs in your soup. There's pesticides in your baby's bottle.
If anything, this is more interesting in our ability to detect small amounts of things than a social statement.
>The Time Traveler's Wife
Heh, something tells me the slashdot crowd isnt exactly into super schmaltzy chick-lit. Even my gf and her friends couldnt stand that movie.
Except Piper was a really weak album with cheesy production values and frankly, doesnt have the replay value of Sgt Peppers. I dont think Floyd really got their groove on until much, much later. Perhaps until they lost Barrett and released Dark Side of The Moon. YMMV.
>Pope Benedict XVI
The guy who is against condom use in Africa, runs his own country, believes non-christians deserve eternal torment, and walks around with a solid fucking gold staff while lamenting the world's poor?
Sorry, we dont need someone with a 13th century worldview telling us what to do. Between secular moralists, secular ethics boards, FDA, AMA, et al, we are doing fine thanks. Men in dresses who think they talk to the invisible men in the sky arent helping. In fact, historically they've only hurt society.
Not everything is a slippery slope. Not all technology leads to dystopia. In fact, these things are rare in an open society.
For instance, if you read the article the two women get 6 hours a sleep nightly. Err, I do that, but I prefer 7. I dont need 8-9 as the article suggests. Sure, they probably get better sleep then I do and feel more refreshed, but you inserted that gene into me it wont lead into any big changes.
This isnt exactly discovering a gene that can let us get by with 2 or 3 hours a night. Its shaving off maybe one. I wouldnt be surprised to find out that this gene really does fuck all for the average person.
>But UAC is Microsoft's answer to running as a non privileged user for the average end user, the default user is an admin
I disagree. UAC is a bandaid for those who dont want to run as user. If you want to run as user, guess what, run as user. Dont shoehorn the UAC into something its not and then criticize it for what it aint.
So wait, the "exploit" is to run untrusted code as admin? That is not a privilege escalation attack. How is this different than running any malicious code?
>I don't mind the death of email.
The business world would. Maybe in your little social circle of IM and twitter addicts you can do without email, but not in the real world where money exchanges hands. Guess which world hires all the email admins?
Theyre not going to register with centmail. Heck, theyre just running a little program that is connecting to smtp servers. That sidesteps all of this.
>But is this different from any other movement, organization, business or community in history?
Its not, but here on slashdot a lot of mom's basement nerds are experiencing this for the first time. I mean, how mature could the GP be? Using terms like "circle jerk" to describe an editing process is very much over the top. I just picture a lot of these guys as incredibly immature and having childish temper tantrums when they dont get what they want. Sadly, a lot of IT people just dont have good social or emotional skills, and we see this manifest itself on slashdot frequently. Immature mods mod them up, and every whiny complaint is suddenly +5 insightful while your excellent comment will go unnoticed or tagged as trolling.
>You want to know why Wikipedia is not growing? It's because the new pack of cyber nerds is defending it's territory.
You have no proof of this statement. You just have a jaded opinion.
Frankly, I like the change the wikipedia has done lately. A couple years ago the site was falling apart, full of anime-related trivia everywhere, shitty articles written by ignorant people, political bias, homeopathic BS in medical articles, etc. The current crop of editors and policies are actually working. If you hate it so much, look at the quality at alternative sites. Its not as good.
Sadly, this is the predictable outcome of so many large scale projects. The people who disagree just decry the site and wait for any criticisms then pull out their pet complaint. Its just not convincing. Perhaps its better to just walk away instead of walking away angry.
What private industry is allowed to do and what government are allowed to do are two completely different things.
If they are not registered on the list then this law does not affect them. Yes, the web-based list shows all the registered offenders.
>The last thing I see as a major issue here is that they will attack the ones we have no problem depriving of their rights first, and when we let them do it to them they will eventually move on to us.
That's the classic slippery slope argument and the classic response is "Not all things lead to a slippery slope." For instance there's no national register of people who drive badly and if you cheat on your husband you dont need to wear a scarlet 'A.' Someone could argue that the former would help society. Some states force new drivers to have a "new driver" sticker in their car for a few months after getting a license, so its not unheard of, but we're not seeing slipperly slope effects like you suggest we might.
>What's wrong with this picture?
Other than urination in public isnt a sex crime in Illinois?
I live in Illinois and have done searches on sex offenders near me, and none of the charges are remotely comparable to your example. Lots of sexual assualt on a minor. A lot. At least half of them and Im not talking 19 yo guy with 17 year girl, but someone with a 10 or 11 year old. Illinois lists the ages of the victims. The rest are regular sexual assault and a few rape charges here and there.
While I have mixed feelings about sexual registrtion in general, I do not see it as the weirdo legal dystopia you suggest it is, at least in my state.
I dont like the characterization as these added charges as being superfluous or some kind of anti-justic conspiracy. Of course, all legislation can be abused but here in Illinois we tack on charges if you commit robbery with a gun as opposed to strong arm. Or if you beat someone half to death. Or whatever. It actually helps sentencing make more sense when applied correctly. The kid who ran into the Quickie-mart and stole a snickers bar after telling Apu he'll beat him up if he tried to stop him shouldnt do the time of the guy who pointed a loaded gun at Apu's head and then pistol-whipped him for a while.
If he got this information from a protected computer then he deserves the charge. If he instead got them by breaking into my house and going through my garbage then he would at least get criminal trespassing. I see no problem with this.
Not to mention that CCD is overplayed in the media. Yes, its real but its not exactly the bee rapture.
On top of that, bees are an evolutionary mess. They dont have the genetic variety to withstand a lot of nature's attacks like viruses and fungus, which are the most likely cause of CCD not this bullshit from the GP.
At this point E) is their best option. Humans must intervene to keeps bees going because mother nature is doing her best to kill them. Someone needs to teach the GP and his ilk that mankind/monsanto/pesticides arent the villians here, its good old mother nature herself.
Its also worth pointing out that the honey bee isnt even native to north America, so its an artificial situation to begin with. Nature doesnt want bees alive here. Again, its up to man and technology to keep them going.
No, its not news its slashdot. The editors realized we havent gotten our two minutes of hate today. How childish and predictable. No wonder no one takes this place even remotely seriously.
That makes no sense to me. Whatever code that add-on can run, Firefox can run. The firefox maintainers just dont want it.
>Any browser that doesn't offer that kind of control is not worth getting.
Well, without that add-on Firefox doesnt either. The question here is why doesnt Firefox do this natively?
You dont know the alternative. If the AC is off then he has the windows open. If the windows are open, especially on the expressway, then the car has more drag. What's the loss then? I doubt the alternative to AC is sitting in the car with the windows closed for "the environment." Regardless, this guy owns a prius so even with the AC blasting he's doing better than 90% of the people out there.
>>major conflict between consumerism and environmentalism
No, youve just stated the problem with activists and idealists: You people are not practical, inviting, or informed.
>If you have the cheddar to drop $40k on a commuter car, you probably don't think twice about the price at the pump.
Well, there's supposedly a 7.5k rebate for this from the federal government. Lets say you live in a state that has a 2.5k rebate too, so lets assume 10k off. Now its a 30k car.
Granted, its not exactly cheap, but a lot of people can afford that as the average new car price in the US is 29k. You'll be saving in gas too. 85 cents in electricity to charge for 40 miles is $8.50 dollars for 400 miles, which is 2 tanks of gas on my saturn, which costs me $60-70 today. Thats hard city driving for my saturn, rural and suburban mileage will be better, but nothing close to the Volt.
>it has to lug around a heavy internal combustion engine
That tiny 1.0L engine that runs a generator? Id rather be able to put gas in it when I cannot find electricity, thanks. My neighborhood BP hasnt exactly switched over.
>Long range electric or efficient internal combustion. Please, please, pick one.
The battery tech isnt here. Perhaps you can wish for faeries to power the car while youre at it because youre being 100% irrational.
Hell, even if you do this, you still need to convince the gas stations to switch over, because you'll sometimes be in a situation where you need power, now, not overnight. Early adopters appreciate a little convenience.
All these companies need to pay for health insurance for all their full time employees. They dont get it via 20+% taxes like you do in Europe. So things cost more but you pay less taxes. I'll leave it up the reader which solution is best.
>The whole web app fad caught on largely because people are too dumb to care.
What? The web caught on because the alternatives like gopher or dumb terminals were terrible compared to being able to embed images and other content. Remember actually using gopher or archie or whatever? Or using a big ugly VMS thin client? Sure, people have nostalgia for this stuff, but its pretty obvious which technology was more marketable.
As far as the web revolution goes, well, I think we're just seeing the natural cheapness of people again. A lot of the web office apps are free, yet Office costs $99 for the student/home edition. Sure, putting these things on the web is putting another layer of junk between you and the code, but if the market consists of cheap people who dont care, then here we are.
Not to mention, you get some big advantages with web based apps. Sure, they'll be slower, but they can store all your documents. You never have to install anything other than a plugin once per browser. You may have 2 or 3 laptops in a typical family, yet everyone just logs into their google apps and does their work. Dad doesnt have to buy the family 5 pack for office.
I think geeks need to stop thinking about which solution is the better technical one and think in terms of markets. The computer industry exists within capitalism. Markets rule, not pedantic geeks arguing over the internet.