Anybody THAT insecure, doesn't need laws to protect them...they need some serious therapy.
So I guess all those laws against workplace harassment are needless, then? Everyone who complains about being singled out by a boss or a coworker again and again is just a pussy who needs a thicker skin and therapy?
Words cannot 'tear your soul to pieces'...unless you let them. Grow some thicker skin...and teach your children the same.
And exactly why should the victim be forced to change rather than the perpetrator? And does this only apply to children, or do people suddenly become worthy of being protected by the law as they turn 18?
Well, physical violence crosses a boundry from just being a bully....and putting someone down, calling names..etc.
No, it doesn't. Children are a lot more honest than adults in this matter: if you want to hurt someone, you pick the most efficient method at your disposal, rather than refrain from one particular form of abuse and pretend it makes you somehow better.
There are already laws against physical violence.
And they aren't enforced, precisely because "it's all part of growing up".
That being said...if as a kid someone hits you, hit them back with everything and anything you can grab. It will certainly keep them from going after you again, like others have said on here....since you will no longer be a 'soft target'.
Too bad for whoever happens to be the softest target, eh?
Yes, boys fight....it is part of growing up...sad but true.
And little kids put everything they find into their mouths, including poisonous mushrooms, dog shit and small plastic objects.
Kids do a lot of stupid things. It doesn't follow that they should be allowed to, rather than stopped and corrected.
But as I said..there is already punishment and rules for physical violence...but calling names or doing stupid shit on the internet....no, I don't think we need to criminalize it. That path can go way too far, way too fast.
As long as parents refuse to put limits on their darling little bully, and the cost falls on the rest of us, what choice do we have? Other than continue letting thugs-in-training continue perfecting their craft and making life a living Hell for their victims, that is. Which is not only immoral but also costly: those victims tend to have problems functioning as adults, leading to loss of economic productivity. And sometimes abuse victims snap in spectacular ways, with school shootings actually being at the low end of the scale (the high end would be Hitler and World War II, altough many of the Roman Emperors certainly put up a though competition).
I hate to see the day when it is against the law to call someone a fuckwad, either to their face, or on a web forum.
Heaven forbid you could no longer hide behind the law while unloading your emotional problems on others. Political freedoms are certainly imperiled by people having to actually articulate their point instead of just making noises to indicate they hate each other and calling it a debate.
What ever happened to 'sticks and stones'?
It ran headfirst into reality. Sticks and stones may break your bones, but humans are a social species, so words can tear your soul to pieces.
Another way of looking at this is that pain is simply your brain interpreting signals from a broken foot in a certain way, and being emotionally hurt by mean words is simply your brain interpreting signals from your ears in a certain way. In a way both are entirely fictitious; in another way, both are entirely real to the person experiencing them. And in theory both can be ignored, but in reality neither can, especially not by an immature brain.
Or take this very law as an example: it is nothing but words. Yet you seem to think it has the potential to cause harm.
So, after thousands of years, we should outlaw kids being kids?
No. We should, however, outlaw unacceptable behaviour.
Geez, this has been what kids do since the end of time...why are kids not able to cope anymore?
Why should anyone have to "cope" with being someone else's punching bag? And why do you think that kids can't cope with limits on their behaviour?
It certainly should not be a crime....it is the nature of kids and part of growing up.
It is the nature of kids and growing up to try things to see what they can or can't get away with. Do you a specific reason why abusing others should be on the "can do" category? Do you perhaps think that prisons need more inmates?
Also, the parents of bullies taking an attitude like yours is precisely why this law is needed.
The correct solution is to help emotional and verbal abusers stop emotionally and verbally abusing people, not try to outlaw it.
The correct solution is to force abusers to stop abusing people. Have abuse result in a series of escalating penalties culminating in imprisonment, and abuse will end. This whole notion that we can't control a few teenage psychopaths, or that anyone should suffer being their punching bag, is ridiculous.
It is an exciting time to be alive. We are discovering planets around stars that people didn't know even existed 50 years ago. We can communicate with people around the world in real-time for free. We have access to information that you would have had to be rich and/or connected to access.
On the other hand, our economic model is being outdated by automation, our energy resources are running out, and climate change is switching to big gear.
I think that the next hundred years will determine humanity's destiny: either we overcome our problems, or they destroy us. Which reminds me of an old Chinese curse...
Japan and Germany? Economies that could be doing so much BETTER if it was NOT for their stupid, worthless governments?
I guess Germans and Japanese really are a master races then, doing better than Americans even with more government. Because, after all, you asserting that they would do even better with less government is all that's needed prove it.
Economies that are destroyed by governments on every day basis?
Yes, but you see, that's the genius of strong government: government is worse than private industry at everything, so it logically follows that it's worse than Wall Street at destroying economy too.
Regulation is what got us in the financial mess to begin with.
Well, insofar as there was an economy to destroy, it did.
As for Japan, when nature decides to deliver the fifth largest earthquake next to a nuclear power plant, there isn't much you can do. Yes, I know hindsight is 20/20, but really, Fukushima was designed to withstand the vast majority of earthquakes, it was only a freak disaster that caused this. Yes, it could have been handled better, but nothing can be perfectly safe or perfectly foolproof.
As I've understood, the reactors withstood both the earthquake and the tsunami. It was, ironically enough, the automatic safety system that caused the catastrophe, because it automatically shut down the reactors when the earthquake hit; since the tsunami destroyed the diesel fuel tanks and electric grid connections, there was no way to keep the cooling pumps running, leading to a meltdown.
Not that it matters: with a renewed wave of nuclear hysteria, it's now impossible to either stop the climate change or to ensure our energy needs for the future.
New companies see the consumers broadband connection as a free resource to exploit. The ISPs would like these companies to share in the burden they are placing on their networks.
See, the thing is... I already paid for that broadband connection. So, it really is free for me to exploit to my heart's content, since it's mine. And if the ISPs sold something they don't have, they don't get to ask more money when they're unable to deliver - they should face charges instead.
Again, I don't support the ISPs efforts, but at least understand their point of view.
Oh, sure, it's not hard to understand at all: they want to charge you and other people over and over again for the same connection.
It's too late to complain about censorship once it's implemented, because your complaint gets censored.
Not when there is a potential why is our economy slumming lately?
Removing regulations from the commercial sector caused a huge bubble to form, and once it burst so many people went bankrupt it dragged the economy into a tailspin. At the same time, long-running trends of outsourcing and increasing income inequality had weakened the economic security of the middle and working classes to the point where the foundations of economy are crumbling, since nobody dares to spend money - and in fact has nothing to spend unless they take debt. It's gotten to the point where any significant hardship will bankrupt the average person, which of course leads to ever-increasing domino effect. Add to this the reflexive Republican opposition to any corrective measure because if it worked, it would make a Democratic president seem good, the unwillingness of those who are well-off to take any responsibility ("taxes are theft" -meme) and the general practicing of Just World Fallacy ("those who are poor are poor because they deserve to be poor"), and it should be no surprise that things are going to Hell.
TL;DR: Conservatists got into power and fucked everything up.
Because everyone is spending their time Poo-Pooing on any new technology or idea that comes out poisoning themselves with the fear of all the evil potential that this could cause, and dismissing the benefits...
This paranoia didn't just happen, you know. It's a conditioned reflex born of countless observations of evil potential being realized for the general public while any benefits only fall to the few on top.
Sure you can do some primitive demos, but the sheer bandwidth required to transfer the textures for modern video games are way beyond the capabilities of current internet technology.
You could use SVG for textures. Then it's the actual detail, not resolution, that determines their size. Also, since you can render SVG to any resolution, you get nice and sharp textures independent of your monitor resolution.
But, if terrorists know it is unlikely they can get through security, there will be much fewer of them likely to try. If a suicide bomber has only a 2% chance of success, there is almost no-one willing to take that chance rather than doing something else.
Such as blow themselves up at the airport if they're caught?
Also, suicide bombers are rarely repeat offenders so I don't really see how facial recognition would help there. Unless, of course, the idea is to recognize all potential threats - such as Muslims and Arabs and people who support them or people who feel sympathy for them or people who criticize this kind of idea on a website, because clearly the only reason why you might find computerized surveillance of your every move unnerving is because you have something to hide, which makes you bad.
The very summary itself mentioned automatically identifying random passing pedestrians and checking their background. I don't want to be digitally stalked at every waking hour.
You are a troll. Why else would you compare Office, a suite of business software, with one of the simplest video games every written?
Because the grandparent specifically compared Office to old video games, and referring to Space Invaders is the quickest way of demonstrating why that's dumb?
Abraham's decision to take Issac to the altar should be universally condemned - killing your own child to appease a powerful figure in your life is never justifiable.
Yet just that was still done in the time and place the story originated in. So one possible purpose of the story was to demonstrate that no, the Jewish God doesn't want human sacrifice, thus nipping a potential problem in the bud. Or it could be to advocate blind obedience, but that makes the whole animal substitute thing a rather inept attempt to save face.
There are other views; however, what is certain is that you can't simply remove a short story fragment from its cultural and textual context and hope to have any hope of figuring out what the originator - human or divine - was trying to say. That is the biggest problem with the loudest advocates and defractors of religion today, and why these discussions usually degenerate into poo-flinging contexts.
As opposed to Communism, which is "shut up and obey your superiors, Comrade."
The difference between communism and corporatism is that communist leaders consider the whole country their personal property, so they'll at least try to maintain it.
I meant that many news reports, on the left/liberal side or those giving speeches about the TP (Shelia Jackson Lee and the like) constantly berate the TP as having meetings that are violent, express and advocate violence as part of their platform....but no, there isn't any documentation to this fact in reality.
It's because everyone is more interested in slinging mud to their opposition than arguing their own points. It's one of the reasons why we're screwed.
You can't get work, but everything is free. Computer: tea: earl grey: hot.
But that would be communism. And someone might get something they didn't deserve. We can't have that.
I remember one old discussion about being able to file your unemployment papers online, so you didn't actually need to go to the office. It was more efficient and thus cheaper, yet there were people arguing against that because unemployment should be nasty and degrading.
That is why this - and all other technological advances - that could turn this world to an utopia will instead make it a dystopia: we have too many people who are not even selfish and callous but malicious. Some people are willing to actually pay more for social services if that makes them nastier for the recipient. And they will block you from getting tea for free, even if that also means denying themselves free beer.
Now while even the poor would live a rich material lifestyle thanks to the tireless working machines,
No they won't. Why would they? Do you think that the people who are greedy assholes now will suddenly stop being greedy assholes just because all the work is done by robots rather than hirelings?
No, the poor will live in poverty, just like they do now. It's just that all the people who are middle-class now - in fact anyone who needs to work for a living - will be poor too.
If robots grow all the food, and provide all the labour, then the proles better be getting something out of it or eventually they will tear down the walls and take it.
Only to be shot by the robotic soldiers. Knowing humanity, how this will likely play out is that the few overlords live in luxury and the rest of us will die. Then the overlords die too, and humanity ends.
2. The concept of AI is beyond the scope of this article, but I believe the consensus is that it is not truelly achievable meaning... robots will never be able to: emotionally reason, have consciousness, or reproduce short of a factory.
There is no such consensus, and in any case none of the things you mention require a human-level AI.
I've never heard a serious argument against AI being possible that wouldn't come down to either argument from incredulity (Chinese Room) or human mind being magical (quantum mind).
Oh well. I guess most of us will starve or be exterminated by the robotic police and army. The few rich overlords who are left will then live in luxury supplied by nigh unlimited slave labour. Business as usual, in other words.
Slide to plutocracy? There are only two choices that are sustainable. Social Democracy is not one of them.
Social Democracy was sustained in most of Europe for two generations since World War II. Our economies only started going to Hell once we bought into the whole "Robber Barons rule" -paradigm (also known as Libertarianism).
You know this too, that's why you posted as an Anonymous Coward.
Methinks you would rather have Rice Paddies by reason of the plaque(s) on your wall. It is only logical.
If I had to choose between these, I'd certainly chose Rice Paddies, because I'm not a baron, so I'll get a higher standard of living that way.
If everyone with just a sniffle worked from home and avoided contact with others, the common cold and flu would have to evolve to become near unnoticeable.
Flu epidemics are caused by viruses jumping species form birds and pigs to humans. It's a new disease (which has similar symptoms to old ones) each time, thus it doesn't evolve into harmlesnness.
With the recent deluge of articles on curing aids, cancer and even the common cold, is the future finally here?
No. We still need an aneutronic microfusion generator, human-level AI, and antigravity.
Of these the solution to our current energy crisis is the big one. AI is evolving constantly, and antigravity isn't really necessary if you simply have enough energy, but energy nothing is possible.
Oh, and we also need to stop our slide to plutocracy, unless of course we want one of the more dystopic futures.
Naturally, the communists on Slashdot will advocate for #3 (also known as the easy way out), which utterly disregards the fact that our state is beyond bankrupt right now.
Wouldn't that make #3 the hard way out? Yet you either do that or let the education level of workforce fall, which in turn leads to a downward spiral of decreasing competitiveness and further cuts.
I can already refuse service to anyone for any reason. Being sued is certainly a good reason.
No, it isn't, unless you think that being in a business relationship with somebody means laws no longer apply to you with regards to them. That, in turn, is a very good reason for me to avoid such relationships with you.
Slashdot Mirror
So I guess all those laws against workplace harassment are needless, then? Everyone who complains about being singled out by a boss or a coworker again and again is just a pussy who needs a thicker skin and therapy?
And exactly why should the victim be forced to change rather than the perpetrator? And does this only apply to children, or do people suddenly become worthy of being protected by the law as they turn 18?
No, it doesn't. Children are a lot more honest than adults in this matter: if you want to hurt someone, you pick the most efficient method at your disposal, rather than refrain from one particular form of abuse and pretend it makes you somehow better.
And they aren't enforced, precisely because "it's all part of growing up".
Too bad for whoever happens to be the softest target, eh?
And little kids put everything they find into their mouths, including poisonous mushrooms, dog shit and small plastic objects.
Kids do a lot of stupid things. It doesn't follow that they should be allowed to, rather than stopped and corrected.
As long as parents refuse to put limits on their darling little bully, and the cost falls on the rest of us, what choice do we have? Other than continue letting thugs-in-training continue perfecting their craft and making life a living Hell for their victims, that is. Which is not only immoral but also costly: those victims tend to have problems functioning as adults, leading to loss of economic productivity. And sometimes abuse victims snap in spectacular ways, with school shootings actually being at the low end of the scale (the high end would be Hitler and World War II, altough many of the Roman Emperors certainly put up a though competition).
Heaven forbid you could no longer hide behind the law while unloading your emotional problems on others. Political freedoms are certainly imperiled by people having to actually articulate their point instead of just making noises to indicate they hate each other and calling it a debate.
It ran headfirst into reality. Sticks and stones may break your bones, but humans are a social species, so words can tear your soul to pieces.
Another way of looking at this is that pain is simply your brain interpreting signals from a broken foot in a certain way, and being emotionally hurt by mean words is simply your brain interpreting signals from your ears in a certain way. In a way both are entirely fictitious; in another way, both are entirely real to the person experiencing them. And in theory both can be ignored, but in reality neither can, especially not by an immature brain.
Or take this very law as an example: it is nothing but words. Yet you seem to think it has the potential to cause harm.
No. We should, however, outlaw unacceptable behaviour.
Why should anyone have to "cope" with being someone else's punching bag? And why do you think that kids can't cope with limits on their behaviour?
It is the nature of kids and growing up to try things to see what they can or can't get away with. Do you a specific reason why abusing others should be on the "can do" category? Do you perhaps think that prisons need more inmates?
Also, the parents of bullies taking an attitude like yours is precisely why this law is needed.
The correct solution is to force abusers to stop abusing people. Have abuse result in a series of escalating penalties culminating in imprisonment, and abuse will end. This whole notion that we can't control a few teenage psychopaths, or that anyone should suffer being their punching bag, is ridiculous.
On the other hand, our economic model is being outdated by automation, our energy resources are running out, and climate change is switching to big gear.
I think that the next hundred years will determine humanity's destiny: either we overcome our problems, or they destroy us. Which reminds me of an old Chinese curse...
I guess Germans and Japanese really are a master races then, doing better than Americans even with more government. Because, after all, you asserting that they would do even better with less government is all that's needed prove it.
Yes, but you see, that's the genius of strong government: government is worse than private industry at everything, so it logically follows that it's worse than Wall Street at destroying economy too.
Well, insofar as there was an economy to destroy, it did.
As I've understood, the reactors withstood both the earthquake and the tsunami. It was, ironically enough, the automatic safety system that caused the catastrophe, because it automatically shut down the reactors when the earthquake hit; since the tsunami destroyed the diesel fuel tanks and electric grid connections, there was no way to keep the cooling pumps running, leading to a meltdown.
Not that it matters: with a renewed wave of nuclear hysteria, it's now impossible to either stop the climate change or to ensure our energy needs for the future.
See, the thing is... I already paid for that broadband connection. So, it really is free for me to exploit to my heart's content, since it's mine. And if the ISPs sold something they don't have, they don't get to ask more money when they're unable to deliver - they should face charges instead.
Oh, sure, it's not hard to understand at all: they want to charge you and other people over and over again for the same connection.
It's too late to complain about censorship once it's implemented, because your complaint gets censored.
Removing regulations from the commercial sector caused a huge bubble to form, and once it burst so many people went bankrupt it dragged the economy into a tailspin. At the same time, long-running trends of outsourcing and increasing income inequality had weakened the economic security of the middle and working classes to the point where the foundations of economy are crumbling, since nobody dares to spend money - and in fact has nothing to spend unless they take debt. It's gotten to the point where any significant hardship will bankrupt the average person, which of course leads to ever-increasing domino effect. Add to this the reflexive Republican opposition to any corrective measure because if it worked, it would make a Democratic president seem good, the unwillingness of those who are well-off to take any responsibility ("taxes are theft" -meme) and the general practicing of Just World Fallacy ("those who are poor are poor because they deserve to be poor"), and it should be no surprise that things are going to Hell.
TL;DR: Conservatists got into power and fucked everything up.
This paranoia didn't just happen, you know. It's a conditioned reflex born of countless observations of evil potential being realized for the general public while any benefits only fall to the few on top.
You could use SVG for textures. Then it's the actual detail, not resolution, that determines their size. Also, since you can render SVG to any resolution, you get nice and sharp textures independent of your monitor resolution.
Such as blow themselves up at the airport if they're caught?
Also, suicide bombers are rarely repeat offenders so I don't really see how facial recognition would help there. Unless, of course, the idea is to recognize all potential threats - such as Muslims and Arabs and people who support them or people who feel sympathy for them or people who criticize this kind of idea on a website, because clearly the only reason why you might find computerized surveillance of your every move unnerving is because you have something to hide, which makes you bad.
The very summary itself mentioned automatically identifying random passing pedestrians and checking their background. I don't want to be digitally stalked at every waking hour.
Because the grandparent specifically compared Office to old video games, and referring to Space Invaders is the quickest way of demonstrating why that's dumb?
Yet just that was still done in the time and place the story originated in. So one possible purpose of the story was to demonstrate that no, the Jewish God doesn't want human sacrifice, thus nipping a potential problem in the bud. Or it could be to advocate blind obedience, but that makes the whole animal substitute thing a rather inept attempt to save face.
There are other views; however, what is certain is that you can't simply remove a short story fragment from its cultural and textual context and hope to have any hope of figuring out what the originator - human or divine - was trying to say. That is the biggest problem with the loudest advocates and defractors of religion today, and why these discussions usually degenerate into poo-flinging contexts.
The difference between communism and corporatism is that communist leaders consider the whole country their personal property, so they'll at least try to maintain it.
It's because everyone is more interested in slinging mud to their opposition than arguing their own points. It's one of the reasons why we're screwed.
But that would be communism. And someone might get something they didn't deserve. We can't have that.
I remember one old discussion about being able to file your unemployment papers online, so you didn't actually need to go to the office. It was more efficient and thus cheaper, yet there were people arguing against that because unemployment should be nasty and degrading.
That is why this - and all other technological advances - that could turn this world to an utopia will instead make it a dystopia: we have too many people who are not even selfish and callous but malicious. Some people are willing to actually pay more for social services if that makes them nastier for the recipient. And they will block you from getting tea for free, even if that also means denying themselves free beer.
No they won't. Why would they? Do you think that the people who are greedy assholes now will suddenly stop being greedy assholes just because all the work is done by robots rather than hirelings?
No, the poor will live in poverty, just like they do now. It's just that all the people who are middle-class now - in fact anyone who needs to work for a living - will be poor too.
Only to be shot by the robotic soldiers. Knowing humanity, how this will likely play out is that the few overlords live in luxury and the rest of us will die. Then the overlords die too, and humanity ends.
There is no such consensus, and in any case none of the things you mention require a human-level AI.
I've never heard a serious argument against AI being possible that wouldn't come down to either argument from incredulity (Chinese Room) or human mind being magical (quantum mind).
Oh well. I guess most of us will starve or be exterminated by the robotic police and army. The few rich overlords who are left will then live in luxury supplied by nigh unlimited slave labour. Business as usual, in other words.
Social Democracy was sustained in most of Europe for two generations since World War II. Our economies only started going to Hell once we bought into the whole "Robber Barons rule" -paradigm (also known as Libertarianism).
You know this too, that's why you posted as an Anonymous Coward.
If I had to choose between these, I'd certainly chose Rice Paddies, because I'm not a baron, so I'll get a higher standard of living that way.
Flu epidemics are caused by viruses jumping species form birds and pigs to humans. It's a new disease (which has similar symptoms to old ones) each time, thus it doesn't evolve into harmlesnness.
In action within people or within nations? Because there are several that looked at it calmly and rationally and started distributing clean needles to drug addicts, thus stopping the spread of HIV through that vector. And there are those that didn't, because that could seen as to be helping the undeserving.
No. We still need an aneutronic microfusion generator, human-level AI, and antigravity.
Of these the solution to our current energy crisis is the big one. AI is evolving constantly, and antigravity isn't really necessary if you simply have enough energy, but energy nothing is possible.
Oh, and we also need to stop our slide to plutocracy, unless of course we want one of the more dystopic futures.
Wouldn't that make #3 the hard way out? Yet you either do that or let the education level of workforce fall, which in turn leads to a downward spiral of decreasing competitiveness and further cuts.
Dunno what any of this has to do with communism.
No, it isn't, unless you think that being in a business relationship with somebody means laws no longer apply to you with regards to them. That, in turn, is a very good reason for me to avoid such relationships with you.