I'm sorry if it offends you. See, I only think of the HUMAN condition, not gender-specific nonsense. Therefore, I am immune to the power that words seem to have, free of the influence which your mind succumbs to.
That's all nice and good, but the fact that you feel the need to make some sort of statement with such a gender-offensive signature says you are lying to yourself.
Sort of like how the most vociferous gay-bashers are the most in-the-closet gays, and the most "family-values fundie preachers" are the ones caught with their pants down and hooked on drugs, booze, and porn.
Those are freemail, not email. There's a qualitative difference, starting with "I'm paying for this and if you try to misuse it I will sue you out of existence."
It doesn't change the fact that your signature IS offensive, obnoxious, misogynistic, etc. But if you think it's okay, why not stick it on your work emails?
There's also the additional fact that your local email provider isn't going around data-mining your emails to serve you ads, unlike facebook and google. And that if they tried, there'd be heck to pay, lawsuits, and $$$.
Of course, at 0.01% efficiency, you won't be able to tell the difference. Unless, of course, you're into that "other" grass, in which case it's "Oh so kool man! Now I don't have to mow the roof AND get enough power to run a watch one day a year."
There's no question that you're right - people have been taught to be bigots, and it's often hard to unlearn.
And for some, it "just comes naturally"... (and for others, there's always Troll Tuesday:-) We're a complex species. So you're right to point this out - being part of any group doesn't magically immunize you.
Of course, there's another question that's entirely missed - a pardon is not the right action.
A pardon basically says "what you did was illegal, and you have been a good enough sheeple in the meantime, so we will pardon your illegal act."
That's not what Turing should receive - the government has already acknowledged that it was barbaric. It should take the step of actually reversing the conviction - not pardoning it. Admit that the law was wrong, and reverse every conviction based on that law.
A lot of peope have little respect for the law because it places the law over justice. It should be the other way around - the law should serve justice, and not vice versa - and people instinctively "know" this. It's why we have jury nullification, and the whole jury thing to begin with - to act as safeguards when unjust laws are unjustly imposed.
Turing through his work probably saved more lives in WW2 than anyone else... who knows, maybe his being "different" was part of what sparked his genius. Even if it wasn't, it's no reason not to right a historic wrong. Appearances do count, because society in general takes their cues from such actions. History has taught us a few lessons. Ignore witch-hunts, and any woman you have a disagreement with becomes a witch. Ignore child abuse, and any child who p*sses off someone is at greater risk of being abused. Ignore spousal abuse (of either sex) and it's seen as "normal", and not domestic violence.
You can buy the exact same tablet today - it's just a rebadged Zenithink C71 - for $120 to $130. In other words, it's a real piece of crap, totally obsolete, and will never see the light of day, because as word gets out that , people will drop it like a hot potato.
Go to 2:06 of the video and try to make yourself believe that's a 7" diagonal screen. Steve Jobs and his RDF might have been able to make you a believer, but this guy is no Steve Jobs.
Also notice how the buttons on the top bar are so small that even on the 15" screen, they sometimes require a second attempt (probably because the demo is fake and they hade to coordinate their actions with the software player).
Also of note - they tilted the screen to try to make it look like the laptop on which it's running has the same aspect ratio as a 7" 840x480 screen.
This device will never see the light of day, because there simply will never be enough pre-orders. Not when you can buy a 10" tablet with android support (this doesn't support android) for $100. Or just buy the Zenithink for $120, follow the instructions on the net on how to root it, and install whatever you want on it yourself.
Just remember, you're getting obsolete tech, poor battery life, limited wireless (only b/g, not b/g/n) and there are much better devices coming down the road (this summer, the same $260 this guy is asking will buy you a quad-core with much better battery life, better networking, better everything.
Go to 2:06 of the video and freeze it - you'll see that the demo is completely fake - that is NOT a 7" screen.
So, what you see is NOT what you'll get. It's not running on the same hardware, it's not anywhere near the same resolution - and yet nowhere is this mentioned.
The idea that this is ever going to sell is insane. Then again, the guy's in Calgary - perhaps he's experiencing a brain freeze?
So, you have a choice - order this PoS for $260 this summer, or order a quad-core with better battery life and more features for the same price. Gee, that's a no-brainer.
What next, som idiot installing freeDOS on a tablet and asking for 3x the price (a freeDOS tablet for $100 would actually make more sense, because there IS a market for people who would like to be able to play those old games in a convenient form factor).
There shouldn't be a problem with that, as long as they hold it in Canada for you. (you can use it during your visits to Canada) If it crosses the border, US law should apply starting from that moment.
So by the same logic, we should just stop all the bits of data from Facebook at the border - after all, when they cross into another country, to quote you, "local law should start applying from that moment."
Thanks for making my argument that local privacy laws should apply, not the US's sell-out laws.
When you foreigners visit the USA (physically or virtually) you seem to want your own law. No. This is the USA. Facebook is in the USA. Why in Hell is this so hard to accept? Make your own facebook if you don't like the law over here.
Okay - in that case, let Canadian pharmacies sell drugs over the Internet to Americans. And weed.
Let Mexican drug lords sell crack. After all, it's not like either their laws or yours can prevent it.
Facebook has 2 choices - either operate within the law of each place it does business, or be kicked out. Their call - and personally, I hope they get kicked out. Productivity would increase.
Not even. "simple inference will show that it was not likely I maintained my employment on the east coast while attending school in-person on the west coast" - the original poster is giving HR way too much credit.
Anything that helps stuff more keywords into your resume counts, doesn't matter where it comes from, because that's all they look at nowadays.
'How might we design an accessible election experience for everyone?'
1. In the long-time tradition of letting the dearly departed cast their ballot, it's time they make it official policy to "bring out your dead." Zombie votes have always been cast anyway - just legitimize the practice.
2. Furthering the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act), people with ADHD and Aspergers should be allowed to better express themsleves by letting them "vote early, vote often". Keep pulling that lever as much as you need to!
3. Since the secrecy of the vote is an integral part of the election process, everyone will get a secret ballot, same as in Soviet Russia. "Do not open the ballot, citizen! It's called a SECRET ballot for a reason!"
4. To avoid discriminating against people who live on the west coast or other time zones, election results will be available nationwide 6 hours before the polls open, EDT. This will allow for more celebrations for the election of our dear leader.
5. Remember, it's not election fraud unless we say it is!
Great advice, but most sites don't work if you block cookies - and then you have sites like slashdot that, after every "improvement" work less (sort of like gnome).
Go read Facebooks' S1 filing - they generate 85% of their revunue from advertising $3.2 billion in advertising revenue last year alone - and the S1 mentions that government privacy legislation can put a significant dent into that.
ten years ago it was clear advertising wasn't the way to make lots of money
... that ignores the fact that it's the #1 method for both google and facebook to generate revenue.
The reason that advertising has become so invasive is because it was allowed to (regulators and gov't asleep at the wheel, like usual), so the bar of invasiveness was continually raised to "stay competitive."
It's not that hard to block facebook at the country level. China's doing it. Canada threatened to do it a few years ago (before even the Europeans, which is what dragged Facebook, kicking and screaming, to the bargaining table in the first place).
And no, they didn't come out and say "fix this or you're going to be blocked", but rather strongly hinted "either we sit down and talk about this or it's a 15,000 fine per user per incident". Since every page access is one incident, that works out to more than the entire GNP of the world.
But there is hope. It's not that hard to quit using them. I stopped using twitter shortly after I signed up for it (didn't really see the point - you cannot have a real conversation in 140 characters). I stopped using facebook after not really using it very much because the UI sucked, and it was mostly people just trying to build their "networks" to either build up their self-esteem, or market some sh*te. I stopped using google+ because of the whoe privacy thing.
We *can* fight back. We have the old stand-bys. Email still works fine, and now that people are used to the mind-numbing stream of consciousness crap of sites like facebook, a well-written email really does get more attention (proof? Find someone who's just wasted an hour on facebook and ask them to recall 3 posts. Most can't even recall ONE).
Irrelevant. They collect your interactions with 3rd parties (other web sites) without your explicit consent - in fact, they collect it before you've even seen the page, so you can't even deny consent. And they do it for people who aren't even logged in - or who never registered, by a combo of browser fingerprinting and ip tracking.
This will get resolved when someone sues facebook and wins big time for invading their privacy.
They still track by IP. They even do this with people who have never signed up, so that if you do, they already have a lot of info on you. And before anyone chimes in that IPs change - (1) they don't change all that often if you're on a cable modem, and (2) they can still distinguish, by broad-based user patterns and browser fingerprinting, individual users for any given IP.
The proper way to implement this is on each website - they would have to replace facebook's code with their own image of the like button, and when a user clicks it, then and only then should it get relayed to facebook or google.
The entry costs are very low. And the more that the likes of facebook, twitter, and google get invasive, the more people will stop using them. I stopped using both facebook and twitter and google+ last year, specifically because of their (lack of) a decent privacy policy.
It's not just statistical data - all those "Like" buttons - when any page with a "Like" button is displayed, it makes a call to facebooks' servers, sending your unique id to facebook to let them know you've seen that page. So over time, facebook develops a rather complete profile of your browsing habits. And no, you don't have to be logged in for this to work.
It's stuff like this that advertisers - and anyone else with "preferential access" (police, etc.) get. Think of it - others have a more complete history of your browsing habits than you do. Facebook is the new cyber-stalker.
and consumers have to understand that not everything is for free and maybe free sites should start charging for usage
What does that have to do with respecting privacy laws? Oh, right... nothing.
If Facebook can't compete while respecting local privacy laws, that's their problem. Someone else will fill the gap - not that it matters much in the long run - all the so-called "social media" will be dead within a decade or so, when technology gets to the point that everyones' devices become their own "personal cloud" and they (and only they) set what can and cannot be shared with others, since it will all be self-hosted.
Facebook (and other operators, such as google) need to understand that they don't have a "right" to sell any and all information they can gather. If they can't meet the rules, someone else will be happy to do so and take their users away from them. That's what competition is about.
It amazes me the number of so-called "technologically-savvy" people who are closet Luddites.
What, they've come out with a new closet? So all of a sudden we're supposed to junk perfectly-working closets that keep all our clothes organized the way we're used to? No thanks.
Seriously though, who cares? You can spend so much time "being connected" that you lose any real connections - look at all the people who use facebook to replace real-life contacts. The more they do this, the more they miss real-life interactions, so they end up in a vicious feedback loop where they spend even more time online trying to make up for it..
A chem prof and an econ prof were discussing how to prevent cheating. The chem prof said she was having a hard time coming up with original questions every year. The econ prof said she just gives the same test every year - she just changes the answers.
Slashdot Mirror
That's all nice and good, but the fact that you feel the need to make some sort of statement with such a gender-offensive signature says you are lying to yourself.
Sort of like how the most vociferous gay-bashers are the most in-the-closet gays, and the most "family-values fundie preachers" are the ones caught with their pants down and hooked on drugs, booze, and porn.
Those are freemail, not email. There's a qualitative difference, starting with "I'm paying for this and if you try to misuse it I will sue you out of existence."
It doesn't change the fact that your signature IS offensive, obnoxious, misogynistic, etc. But if you think it's okay, why not stick it on your work emails?
There's also the additional fact that your local email provider isn't going around data-mining your emails to serve you ads, unlike facebook and google. And that if they tried, there'd be heck to pay, lawsuits, and $$$.
Of course, at 0.01% efficiency, you won't be able to tell the difference. Unless, of course, you're into that "other" grass, in which case it's "Oh so kool man! Now I don't have to mow the roof AND get enough power to run a watch one day a year."
There's no question that you're right - people have been taught to be bigots, and it's often hard to unlearn. And for some, it "just comes naturally" ... (and for others, there's always Troll Tuesday :-) We're a complex species. So you're right to point this out - being part of any group doesn't magically immunize you.
Of course, there's another question that's entirely missed - a pardon is not the right action.
A pardon basically says "what you did was illegal, and you have been a good enough sheeple in the meantime, so we will pardon your illegal act."
That's not what Turing should receive - the government has already acknowledged that it was barbaric. It should take the step of actually reversing the conviction - not pardoning it. Admit that the law was wrong, and reverse every conviction based on that law.
A lot of peope have little respect for the law because it places the law over justice. It should be the other way around - the law should serve justice, and not vice versa - and people instinctively "know" this. It's why we have jury nullification, and the whole jury thing to begin with - to act as safeguards when unjust laws are unjustly imposed.
Turing through his work probably saved more lives in WW2 than anyone else ... who knows, maybe his being "different" was part of what sparked his genius. Even if it wasn't, it's no reason not to right a historic wrong. Appearances do count, because society in general takes their cues from such actions. History has taught us a few lessons. Ignore witch-hunts, and any woman you have a disagreement with becomes a witch. Ignore child abuse, and any child who p*sses off someone is at greater risk of being abused. Ignore spousal abuse (of either sex) and it's seen as "normal", and not domestic violence.
Go to 2:06 of the video and try to make yourself believe that's a 7" diagonal screen. Steve Jobs and his RDF might have been able to make you a believer, but this guy is no Steve Jobs.
Also notice how the buttons on the top bar are so small that even on the 15" screen, they sometimes require a second attempt (probably because the demo is fake and they hade to coordinate their actions with the software player).
Also of note - they tilted the screen to try to make it look like the laptop on which it's running has the same aspect ratio as a 7" 840x480 screen.
This device will never see the light of day, because there simply will never be enough pre-orders. Not when you can buy a 10" tablet with android support (this doesn't support android) for $100. Or just buy the Zenithink for $120, follow the instructions on the net on how to root it, and install whatever you want on it yourself.
Just remember, you're getting obsolete tech, poor battery life, limited wireless (only b/g, not b/g/n) and there are much better devices coming down the road (this summer, the same $260 this guy is asking will buy you a quad-core with much better battery life, better networking, better everything.
Go to 2:06 of the video and freeze it - you'll see that the demo is completely fake - that is NOT a 7" screen.
So, what you see is NOT what you'll get. It's not running on the same hardware, it's not anywhere near the same resolution - and yet nowhere is this mentioned.
The idea that this is ever going to sell is insane. Then again, the guy's in Calgary - perhaps he's experiencing a brain freeze?
So, you have a choice - order this PoS for $260 this summer, or order a quad-core with better battery life and more features for the same price. Gee, that's a no-brainer.
What next, som idiot installing freeDOS on a tablet and asking for 3x the price (a freeDOS tablet for $100 would actually make more sense, because there IS a market for people who would like to be able to play those old games in a convenient form factor).
So by the same logic, we should just stop all the bits of data from Facebook at the border - after all, when they cross into another country, to quote you, "local law should start applying from that moment."
Thanks for making my argument that local privacy laws should apply, not the US's sell-out laws.
Okay - in that case, let Canadian pharmacies sell drugs over the Internet to Americans. And weed.
Let Mexican drug lords sell crack. After all, it's not like either their laws or yours can prevent it.
Facebook has 2 choices - either operate within the law of each place it does business, or be kicked out. Their call - and personally, I hope they get kicked out. Productivity would increase.
Anything that helps stuff more keywords into your resume counts, doesn't matter where it comes from, because that's all they look at nowadays.
1. In the long-time tradition of letting the dearly departed cast their ballot, it's time they make it official policy to "bring out your dead." Zombie votes have always been cast anyway - just legitimize the practice.
2. Furthering the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act), people with ADHD and Aspergers should be allowed to better express themsleves by letting them "vote early, vote often". Keep pulling that lever as much as you need to!
3. Since the secrecy of the vote is an integral part of the election process, everyone will get a secret ballot, same as in Soviet Russia. "Do not open the ballot, citizen! It's called a SECRET ballot for a reason!"
4. To avoid discriminating against people who live on the west coast or other time zones, election results will be available nationwide 6 hours before the polls open, EDT. This will allow for more celebrations for the election of our dear leader.
5. Remember, it's not election fraud unless we say it is!
Great advice, but most sites don't work if you block cookies - and then you have sites like slashdot that, after every "improvement" work less (sort of like gnome).
Go read Facebooks' S1 filing - they generate 85% of their revunue from advertising $3.2 billion in advertising revenue last year alone - and the S1 mentions that government privacy legislation can put a significant dent into that.
And no, they didn't come out and say "fix this or you're going to be blocked", but rather strongly hinted "either we sit down and talk about this or it's a 15,000 fine per user per incident". Since every page access is one incident, that works out to more than the entire GNP of the world.
We *can* fight back. We have the old stand-bys. Email still works fine, and now that people are used to the mind-numbing stream of consciousness crap of sites like facebook, a well-written email really does get more attention (proof? Find someone who's just wasted an hour on facebook and ask them to recall 3 posts. Most can't even recall ONE).
This will get resolved when someone sues facebook and wins big time for invading their privacy.
The proper way to implement this is on each website - they would have to replace facebook's code with their own image of the like button, and when a user clicks it, then and only then should it get relayed to facebook or google.
Can't say I miss any of them either.
It's stuff like this that advertisers - and anyone else with "preferential access" (police, etc.) get. Think of it - others have a more complete history of your browsing habits than you do. Facebook is the new cyber-stalker.
What does that have to do with respecting privacy laws? Oh, right ... nothing.
If Facebook can't compete while respecting local privacy laws, that's their problem. Someone else will fill the gap - not that it matters much in the long run - all the so-called "social media" will be dead within a decade or so, when technology gets to the point that everyones' devices become their own "personal cloud" and they (and only they) set what can and cannot be shared with others, since it will all be self-hosted.
Facebook (and other operators, such as google) need to understand that they don't have a "right" to sell any and all information they can gather. If they can't meet the rules, someone else will be happy to do so and take their users away from them. That's what competition is about.
What, they've come out with a new closet? So all of a sudden we're supposed to junk perfectly-working closets that keep all our clothes organized the way we're used to? No thanks.
Seriously though, who cares? You can spend so much time "being connected" that you lose any real connections - look at all the people who use facebook to replace real-life contacts. The more they do this, the more they miss real-life interactions, so they end up in a vicious feedback loop where they spend even more time online trying to make up for it..
A chem prof and an econ prof were discussing how to prevent cheating. The chem prof said she was having a hard time coming up with original questions every year. The econ prof said she just gives the same test every year - she just changes the answers.
What a racket!