Just for reference, the statement under discussion was: "well then you're an idiot"
(Just to be clear, I'm not the original AC poster.)
That I believe.
He wasn't simply calling someone a name. He was making a legitimate point.
Would a bare "you're an idiot" have been a legitimate point in your view, or does the "well then" qualifier give it sufficient logical depth to make it an admissible argument in rational discourse?
Or maybe that sentiment appeals to you emotionally a little bit, and you feel that the standards of intellectual discussion should be lowered to admit ideas with which you agree?
You might consider how such standards might be applied to your own statements. For example, I could have said "well then you're an idiot" right then and you would have been obligated to consider it a "legitimate point".
The person replying "yes" (electron sponge) was either displaying ignorance of the reasons not to be proud to be an American, or he was displaying is support of such despicable policies.
Or he has, in fact, considered them carefully and reached a conclusion different than yours. Perhaps he has other sources of information than you. Perhaps that he has decided that, on balance, he still is justified in feeling proud.
"Idiot" is one of the nicer responses in such a situation, implying the person doesn't understand the situation and rather than that he's a cruel person.
If you're really that far into the subtleties of language, you might appreciate this interesting paper which addresses some of those deeper points.
Had electron sponge actually explained his response in detail, simple name calling would have been grossly unfair and rude. As is, the "yes" response really is no better than name calling
Oh, get real.
"So do you still feel proud to be a [citizen of your country]?"
"Yes." <-- NOT NAME-CALLING
and although I would think it better ignored, since the moderators drew attention to it, an equally offensive reply is not out of place.
I'm proud to be an American, and proud of most things about my country.
If you find that offensive, well, I'm afraid you're just going to have to get over it.
The lack-of-a-login is called Anonymous Coward because absolutely the only reason to post anonymously is fear. You can get an email account for free, and you can get a slashdot account for free, and neither has to be tied to your real name and identity like mine is.
I've sometimes posted anonymously out of laziness. For example, I lacked the login cookie since I switched computers and didn't feel like driving to the bank to retrieve my 32-character random password from the safe deposit box. (not really, probably the sticky note just fell off the monitor and was under my chair)
But I didn't then go acting like some kind of persecuted minority about it either.
To be fair, Leiberman had absolutely no power to force Amazon to take Wikileaks down.
Yeah, neither do I.
Hey, let's try an experiment. You call up Amazon and demand an explanation of why they're selling copies of The Pentagon Papers (those are leaked government documents in case you didn't know) and we'll see how quickly they shut off amazon.com from their servers.
I don't really see what is wrong with that. The senators have no obligation to do what the lobbyists want (thank god for that), and Amazon has no obligation to do what a Senator wants (thank god for that too).
I guess you've never heard of these things called "campaign contributions" and "high paid corporate board member or lobbyist job when you leave office".
If you think that is wrong, you probably don't do too well in inter-personal relations, because that is simply how the world works, and there is nothing wrong with it.
You seem to be saying that the way the world works is correct, by definition. Guess I don't fully accept that.
No laws were broken, there isn't even any corruption or coercion.
No laws were broken by systematic racial discrimination either (until it was made illegal of course). People who complained were told that it's "simply how the world works".
It was simply a Senator expressing his displeasure privately (which is much more likely to actually change something) and a company deciding it wasn't worth damaging their relationship with said Senator.
That's what you do when someone does something that affects you that you do not approve of.
Yes, and I could possibly be held liable for doing it in ways that harm others or break laws.
When the US Government (e.g., a Senator's office) does it, in particular to restrain speech and press, it's falls under the scope of the US constitution.
Freedom works both ways. I give you the freedom of speech, but please allow me the freedom to not do business with you.
As a private citizen, I expect the right to be able to invite who I want, and not invite who I don't want, to my birthday party. And they have the right not to come. Or come and bring me a lousy gift. Or come and complain that I serve chocolate cupcakes instead of strawberry. Or whatever.
But when you go out into the community and open a business, you give up a bit of that right in the interest of others' rights of fair dealing. For example, it's been settled unequivocally that you can't run a lunch counter and refuse to serve blacks.
So, no, Amazon doesn't have the "freedom to not do business with you". They sell raw CPU by the cycle, disk storage and network bandwidth by the byte. In my opinion it is despicable for them to discriminate against customers based on political beliefs and vague innuendo of legal issues when no actual US law has been cited against their customer.
For a bookseller and publisher such as Amazon who's profits derive directly from first amendment protections of the press to actively show contempt for those principles is, IMHO, downright disgusting. Keep in mind, this is the company that's trying to sell us books they can later erase.
After reading press reports that Amazon was hosting the Wikileaks website, Committee staff contacted Amazon Tuesday for an explanation.
Clearly Lieberman's office called them before they took it down. It is not cool at all in my book for government officials to be calling web providers and demanding "an explanation".
It's unpatriotic. Downright un-American.
"This morning Amazon informed my staff that it has ceased to host the Wikileaks website. I wish that Amazon had taken this action earlier based on Wikileaks' previous publication of classified material."
Clearly Amazon reported their compliance to Lieberman after they did it.
"The company's decision to cut off Wikileaks now is the right decision and should set the standard for other companies Wikileaks is using to distribute its illegally seized material. I call on any other company or organization that is hosting Wikileaks to immediately terminate its relationship with them."
Clearly Lieberman thinks it is a good idea for communications service companies to be under the heel of random senators' offices. It would seem that in his and Amazon's view, cloud computing and data center hosting arrangements should be provisioned at the pleasure of His Royal Highness.
"Wikileaks' illegal, outrageous, and reckless acts have compromised our national security and put lives at risk around the world. No responsible company - whether American or foreign - should assist Wikileaks in its efforts to disseminate these stolen materials.
Lieberman and Amazon need to go on record and explain whether or not this policy should extend to other organizations such as The New York Times and The Washington Post. Amazon needs to make a statement about whether or not The New York Times is welcome to host on their EC2 service, and whether or not they intend to exercise editorial control.
I will be asking Amazon about the extent of its relationship with Wikileaks and what it and other web service providers will do in the future to ensure that their services are not used to distribute stolen, classified information.
Good point. I did think I saw something about them having a court order.
Still, the larger point is that the effects on the network are the same from the outside even if the boundaries of the system are drawn large enough to include both the DHS and some high-level courts.
A. IIRC, Wikileaks has survived domain attacks before.
B. Wikileaks is just publishing military secrets, it's not like they're selling fake handbags or sneaking into theaters or anything.
C. Wikileaks probably has a whole new branch of the US govt being formed (if not a whole new United Nations) to go after them by now. It's likely they're still more useful alive at this point.
Any of hundreds of countries could start selling domains (wait a minute - they already did) under which the US probably couldn't jack with with under widely-accepted international treaty.
Of course, the sword cuts both ways. Consider all the hyperlinks that Libya controls (bit.ly). What if they decided they wanted the largest distributed supercomputer on the planet, for free? They simply do what DHS did here - redirect the domains to pages serving malware.
It's just as easy, if not easier, for an end-user to change his DNS resolver as it is to download and install file sharing software. If it gets bad enough, basic software will eventually just come with a built-in web proxy that does nothing except use non-US DNS resolvers.
Reasons why, in pragmatic terms, history will likely regard this as an incredibly short-sighted move by the US government.
No, the police will show up and shut down physical stores for selling illegal things/things illegally. Perhaps they do need a judge to sign off on it, but presumably the DHS had its own paperwork in order.
"You know sometimes I get so carried away, I wipe my fingers at the end thinking that I've got paint on them."
That pretty much proves my point, being, the iPad is a better finger paint simulator than it is something for people like me who create with Turing-complete media.
Hmm, I think your information is about 15 years out of date.
Today, surely every businessperson knows Microsoft isn't the software-development division of IBM anymore. They're the software-development division of Dell.
I think he's got it partly right: from the outset, the big markets identified for tablet computers were hospital, warehouse inventory, and maintenance person type jobs. Note these are cases where somebody probably runs just a single app and they didn't choose the app themselves it was a condition of their job. In other words, its a crummy data entry device.
The iPad seems like the first tablet that's positioned as something someone would actually enjoy using, rather than being a Windows XP notebook with a barcode scanner in place of a keyboard.
That said, to this hacker it seems absurd to think of an iPad representing freedom. It looks to me more like a cross between an etch-a-sketch, finger paints, and a television.
On the lower end of the range, books are great. They're starting to read or reading more but probably haven't decided what kind of books they don't like yet. There are several modular marble track systems on the market, Some even integrate with the Duplo-sized bricks. Everybody enjoys these.
The upper end of that range will want to choose their own gifts. Finding out if they're into Nintendo DS or another specific system can narrow the choices in a helpful way.
No, it "isn't some random project by 4 college dropouts." Based on what I see from the outside about the way MS works it's more likely to be:
13 MBAs from prominent schools who specialize at yelling at their subordinates 1 guy from the former Soviet Union with a Master's degree in EE 1 guy with a Master's degree in Java UML frameworks from each country that has a population over 1B 18 part-time contractors and outsourcers
Only one of these is likely to know what the word "hackable" means and he's smart enough to know when to keep his mouth shut.
I replied on the blog. We'll see if they actually approve any comments.
Here's what I said:
"For starters, there will never be a technological device that imparts common sense when it comes to safe driving."
Thank you for saying that.
We need be conscious of the fact that technological solutions are usually easier to deploy than common sense, and that inflexible mechanical rules which require no human judgment are easier to enforce. If we common-sense humans don't remain vigilant, these easier choices will accumulate in our environment to the point of absurd tragedy.
Yeah, that's legal here. Guns and ammo are explicitly allowed in checked baggage by the TSA.
Ammo is literally small metal shaped-charge "cartridges" filled with explosive powder. But plastic cartridges filled with provably harmless printer ink or toner are explicitly prohibited, however.
Obviously that means it's legal to carry guns and ammo into airports. Presumably group of bad guys with not-yet-loaded guns could accumulate in the airport, and as long as they didn't try to take threateningly large shampoo bottles through security, the TSA would have nothing to say about it. In fact, for more easy massacreing, the TSA would ensure that there is a large crowd of innocent people waiting in line for their pre-flight pelvic exams.
At this point, the wackos would say that some massacre like that is secretly what the government wants to happen so they have an excuse to take away everybody's guns. I find that really hard to believe, but I also have to admit that such claims are getting harder to disprove over time.
Obviously, these toner cartridges were packed in some sort of suitcase.
From the media reports and pictures, it looked like they were in whole printers.
Perhaps they missed the real threat. They should really have banned all office paper-handling equipment of 10 pages-per-minute or higher capacity. Imagine the damage that a barometrically-triggered paper shredder could cause, particularly on a plane with working WiFi.
Slashdot Mirror
That's good advice. Because even if you were (or were not) eventually impressed, it would be impossible for you to prove it either way.
This is why posts from those with no identity are inherently less valuable than those from even pseudonyms.
Just for reference, the statement under discussion was: "well then you're an idiot"
That I believe.
Would a bare "you're an idiot" have been a legitimate point in your view, or does the "well then" qualifier give it sufficient logical depth to make it an admissible argument in rational discourse?
Or maybe that sentiment appeals to you emotionally a little bit, and you feel that the standards of intellectual discussion should be lowered to admit ideas with which you agree?
You might consider how such standards might be applied to your own statements. For example, I could have said "well then you're an idiot" right then and you would have been obligated to consider it a "legitimate point".
Or he has, in fact, considered them carefully and reached a conclusion different than yours. Perhaps he has other sources of information than you. Perhaps that he has decided that, on balance, he still is justified in feeling proud.
If you're really that far into the subtleties of language, you might appreciate this interesting paper which addresses some of those deeper points.
Oh, get real.
"So do you still feel proud to be a [citizen of your country]?"
"Yes." <-- NOT NAME-CALLING
I'm proud to be an American, and proud of most things about my country.
If you find that offensive, well, I'm afraid you're just going to have to get over it.
I've sometimes posted anonymously out of laziness. For example, I lacked the login cookie since I switched computers and didn't feel like driving to the bank to retrieve my 32-character random password from the safe deposit box. (not really, probably the sticky note just fell off the monitor and was under my chair)
But I didn't then go acting like some kind of persecuted minority about it either.
Yeah, neither do I.
Hey, let's try an experiment. You call up Amazon and demand an explanation of why they're selling copies of The Pentagon Papers (those are leaked government documents in case you didn't know) and we'll see how quickly they shut off amazon.com from their servers.
I guess you've never heard of these things called "campaign contributions" and "high paid corporate board member or lobbyist job when you leave office".
You seem to be saying that the way the world works is correct, by definition. Guess I don't fully accept that.
No laws were broken by systematic racial discrimination either (until it was made illegal of course). People who complained were told that it's "simply how the world works".
Yes, and I could possibly be held liable for doing it in ways that harm others or break laws.
When the US Government (e.g., a Senator's office) does it, in particular to restrain speech and press, it's falls under the scope of the US constitution.
As a private citizen, I expect the right to be able to invite who I want, and not invite who I don't want, to my birthday party. And they have the right not to come. Or come and bring me a lousy gift. Or come and complain that I serve chocolate cupcakes instead of strawberry. Or whatever.
But when you go out into the community and open a business, you give up a bit of that right in the interest of others' rights of fair dealing. For example, it's been settled unequivocally that you can't run a lunch counter and refuse to serve blacks.
So, no, Amazon doesn't have the "freedom to not do business with you". They sell raw CPU by the cycle, disk storage and network bandwidth by the byte. In my opinion it is despicable for them to discriminate against customers based on political beliefs and vague innuendo of legal issues when no actual US law has been cited against their customer.
For a bookseller and publisher such as Amazon who's profits derive directly from first amendment protections of the press to actively show contempt for those principles is, IMHO, downright disgusting. Keep in mind, this is the company that's trying to sell us books they can later erase.
http://lieberman.senate.gov/index.cfm/news-events/news/2010/12/amazon-severs-ties-with-wikileaks
Clearly Lieberman's office called them before they took it down. It is not cool at all in my book for government officials to be calling web providers and demanding "an explanation". It's unpatriotic. Downright un-American.
Clearly Amazon reported their compliance to Lieberman after they did it.
Clearly Lieberman thinks it is a good idea for communications service companies to be under the heel of random senators' offices. It would seem that in his and Amazon's view, cloud computing and data center hosting arrangements should be provisioned at the pleasure of His Royal Highness.
Lieberman and Amazon need to go on record and explain whether or not this policy should extend to other organizations such as The New York Times and The Washington Post. Amazon needs to make a statement about whether or not The New York Times is welcome to host on their EC2 service, and whether or not they intend to exercise editorial control.
Is this guy channeling Nixon, or what?
But he's not an Anonymous Coward calling others names on Slashdot.
(That was a joke.)
Been using OpenGL and FLTK for a project for a few weeks now. Hope I never have to use anything else.
Good point. I did think I saw something about them having a court order.
Still, the larger point is that the effects on the network are the same from the outside even if the boundaries of the system are drawn large enough to include both the DHS and some high-level courts.
A. IIRC, Wikileaks has survived domain attacks before.
B. Wikileaks is just publishing military secrets, it's not like they're selling fake handbags or sneaking into theaters or anything.
C. Wikileaks probably has a whole new branch of the US govt being formed (if not a whole new United Nations) to go after them by now. It's likely they're still more useful alive at this point.
Any of hundreds of countries could start selling domains (wait a minute - they already did) under which the US probably couldn't jack with with under widely-accepted international treaty.
Of course, the sword cuts both ways. Consider all the hyperlinks that Libya controls (bit.ly). What if they decided they wanted the largest distributed supercomputer on the planet, for free? They simply do what DHS did here - redirect the domains to pages serving malware.
It's just as easy, if not easier, for an end-user to change his DNS resolver as it is to download and install file sharing software. If it gets bad enough, basic software will eventually just come with a built-in web proxy that does nothing except use non-US DNS resolvers.
Reasons why, in pragmatic terms, history will likely regard this as an incredibly short-sighted move by the US government.
No, the police will show up and shut down physical stores for selling illegal things/things illegally. Perhaps they do need a judge to sign off on it, but presumably the DHS had its own paperwork in order.
Then I suppose if you want to handle raw, uncompressed 1080p60 I guess you'll need something with more bandwidth than this particular Atom.
Here's a thought: I wonder if you could route that other external PCIe back into the FPGA for more bandwidth?
http://edc.intel.com/Link.aspx?id=3961
350 user I/O pins. I think that could control a few Christmas lights. Or make a nifty message-passing bus for a parallel computer.
Wonder if anyone will make inexpensive boards with breakout IO?
Those are very pretty flowers.
That pretty much proves my point, being, the iPad is a better finger paint simulator than it is something for people like me who create with Turing-complete media.
Hmm, I think your information is about 15 years out of date.
Today, surely every businessperson knows Microsoft isn't the software-development division of IBM anymore. They're the software-development division of Dell.
Yes, you're right. Etch-a-sketches and finger paints are creative media.
I apologize. I shouldn't have compared them to the iPad.
Restriction is freedom. Apple. 1984.
I think he's got it partly right: from the outset, the big markets identified for tablet computers were hospital, warehouse inventory, and maintenance person type jobs. Note these are cases where somebody probably runs just a single app and they didn't choose the app themselves it was a condition of their job. In other words, its a crummy data entry device.
The iPad seems like the first tablet that's positioned as something someone would actually enjoy using, rather than being a Windows XP notebook with a barcode scanner in place of a keyboard.
That said, to this hacker it seems absurd to think of an iPad representing freedom. It looks to me more like a cross between an etch-a-sketch, finger paints, and a television.
As said above, it's hard to go wrong with Legos.
5-10 is a huge range to generalize about.
On the lower end of the range, books are great. They're starting to read or reading more but probably haven't decided what kind of books they don't like yet. There are several modular marble track systems on the market, Some even integrate with the Duplo-sized bricks. Everybody enjoys these.
The upper end of that range will want to choose their own gifts. Finding out if they're into Nintendo DS or another specific system can narrow the choices in a helpful way.
No, it "isn't some random project by 4 college dropouts." Based on what I see from the outside about the way MS works it's more likely to be:
13 MBAs from prominent schools who specialize at yelling at their subordinates
1 guy from the former Soviet Union with a Master's degree in EE
1 guy with a Master's degree in Java UML frameworks from each country that has a population over 1B
18 part-time contractors and outsourcers
Only one of these is likely to know what the word "hackable" means and he's smart enough to know when to keep his mouth shut.
I replied on the blog. We'll see if they actually approve any comments.
Here's what I said:
"For starters, there will never be a technological device that imparts common sense when it comes to safe driving."
Thank you for saying that.
We need be conscious of the fact that technological solutions are usually easier to deploy than common sense, and that inflexible mechanical rules which require no human judgment are easier to enforce. If we common-sense humans don't remain vigilant, these easier choices will accumulate in our environment to the point of absurd tragedy.
Yeah, that's legal here. Guns and ammo are explicitly allowed in checked baggage by the TSA.
Ammo is literally small metal shaped-charge "cartridges" filled with explosive powder. But plastic cartridges filled with provably harmless printer ink or toner are explicitly prohibited, however.
Obviously that means it's legal to carry guns and ammo into airports. Presumably group of bad guys with not-yet-loaded guns could accumulate in the airport, and as long as they didn't try to take threateningly large shampoo bottles through security, the TSA would have nothing to say about it. In fact, for more easy massacreing, the TSA would ensure that there is a large crowd of innocent people waiting in line for their pre-flight pelvic exams.
At this point, the wackos would say that some massacre like that is secretly what the government wants to happen so they have an excuse to take away everybody's guns. I find that really hard to believe, but I also have to admit that such claims are getting harder to disprove over time.
From the media reports and pictures, it looked like they were in whole printers.
Perhaps they missed the real threat. They should really have banned all office paper-handling equipment of 10 pages-per-minute or higher capacity. Imagine the damage that a barometrically-triggered paper shredder could cause, particularly on a plane with working WiFi.