Philosophy can be integrated into the curriculum as early as Elementary school, and has wonderful effects that extend beyond developing reasoning skills.
Yes, that would make sense...but where would you find qualified teachers? Schools tend to hire the products of their own system, therefore if the schools are deficient, their graduates will share the deficiency.
I taught philosophy, both as a Teaching Assistant at a major State university while in grad school and at a 2 year "community college" while I was looking for a university teaching job. I found that 90% of the undergraduates in my classes could not effectively express themselves in writing. Many of them could not construct a grammatically correct sentence. The ability to organize thoughts into paragraphs and to carry a line of thought to some sort of logical conclusion was within the ability of only that top 10% of my students.
This was not only a problem with the written word, but also of reading comprehension. For example, I found that the majority of students could not tell the difference between views that a writer was advocating and those views he cited only so that he could oppose them. Very few of them knew how to read critically, even how to tell the difference between a statement that was supported by an argument and a mere assertion. They had trouble recognizing arguments, let alone evaluating them for relevance or for obvious fallacies.
I did the best I could, but my ability to help these students was limited by their lack of the basics of education. Clearly, their 12 years of public school had been largely wasted time, and I was not going to fix this in one semester.
I'm not optimistic about being able to fix this problem, as the American educational system is pretty much a bloated self-serving mechanism that runs on its own inertia (and the excessive funds it extorts from the public). It ought to be fixed in English and Science classes beginning at a very early age after students have mastered the basics—reading, writing and arithmetic. Both sorts of classes should concentrate on the basics of critical thinking; they should stress the idea that assertions must be supported by reasons. English should equip students with the ability to read critically and to coherently express their thinking both orally and in writing. Science should teach how to observe, how to draw conclusions from those observations, and how to test those conclusions. That's how it should be. I'm not holding my breath.
... I felt like I was looking at real person when Charlie was looking in the mirror and saw the thing in his eye. Creepy as fuck. The cesarian was also creepy as fuck in 3D as well, not because of in your face effects, but because you really felt as if you were right there looking at real people. That's the future of 3D: subtle enhancement.
That's funny—I've never felt that I'm looking at unreal people when I was watching a 2D movie. I never said to myself, "Self, wouldn't it be nice if these characters looked like real people?". Tastes differ, of course; but I wonder if you aren't praising an interesting visual effect, rather than enjoying the movie more because of that effect. When I'm totally immersed in a movie (that is to say, when I am watching a very good movie), I don't usually think about the cinematographic techniques that are being employed. In fact, if I notice the techniques as such, that's a sign that I'm not really immersed in the movie. Usually, that's because it's a bad movie.
I suppose that the market place will eventually decide whether 3D-ness is worth enough to most people so that they will pay extra for it.
I've got a bad feeling about the Hobbit movie anyway—they cast a youngish good-looking guy as Thorin Oakenshield. WTF? Thorin Oakenshield was, at his best, a belligerent chauvinist curmudgeon. He hated elves and coveted jewelry. He was not a younger and sexier Gandalf, like the guy I saw in the trailers. I have a feeling that the characters will be two-dimensional, regardless of whether you see the movie in 3D or not. But I hope I'm wrong.
The very idea of microstamping was never intended to assist law enforcement. It was specifically intended to target lawful gun owners to cause them harassment and extra expense and to better "track the law-abiding citizenry".
Agreed. The requirement that it should be shown to actually work has never been a deterrent to passing dumb laws, especially gun laws. I suspect the real interest for the anti-gun people here is the bureaucracy and procedures that will be required to track the "specially imprinted" firing pins. First, you'll have to establish a registry that ties each purchaser of a gun so equipped to the code imprinted on the gun's firing pin. This means a huge database and the additional staff to make it work. Also, replacing a firing pin is fairly simple, and replacement firing pins are easily obtainable. I've replaced a few myself, along with other miscellaneous gun parts. So you'll have to register and track each firing pin.
Some of those card numbers belonged to people. If I'd gotten a real job right out of college I woulda been one of the first to buy their service. It was $99 a year, and I was too poor/cheap to swing it.
I doubt many of those people were actually screwed by the hack. Contesting charges is not hard. The last analysis I saw actually indicated that the charities Anon "gasve" money to actually lost out on the deal because they had to process both the payment and cancelling the payments.
Yeah, and I was one of those people to whom one of those credit card numbers belonged. I got a deeply discounted membership to Stratfor for a year, but then didn't renew it because I didn't think their news service was worth $99 per annum. While I didn't get any false charges on my credit card, I was inconvenienced by the perpetrators of this hack because my bank cancelled my credit card, and required me to get a new one. I then had to contact to everyone who was automatically billing my charges to that credit card, and give them the new number. Inevitably, I missed a couple, and got some late charges. It wasn't a disaster, but it was certainly inconvenient.
What really angers me about incidents of this type is the tone of moral superiority taken by their perpetrators and certain members of the community who support them. Somehow, these faceless actors are ascribed the right to judge which people and which organizations are evil, and to mete out punishment accordingly. If they have such a right, then we will soon arrive at the stage where no one has any rights.
The confused people are the ones who titled the article LulzSec. Jeremy Hammond may be LulzSec, but he's being charged with the Stratfor hack, and that was done by Anonymous.
Your reasoning is a bit unclear. Let me try to help: We know who Jeremy Hammond is, so he is not anonymous. Because he is not anonymous, he could not possibly have perpetrated any crime attributed to the anonymous Anonymous.. Did I get that right?
money...Plain and simple, THAT is my motivator at work.
Lots of studies have shown money is not a great motivator.
It's certainly not the only motivator. I've left well-paid jobs because I felt that my work was pointless. I've also left jobs because I felt underpaid. Money is not the only motivator, but it's certainly a major consideration.
Trinkets do not help either. One of the few things I do think can be a motivator is control - as a reward instead of cash or gifts, give the employes some more control over their life at work.
Heh. I was once handed a massive (and rather high quality) framing hammer as my "reward" for "helping to complete the project on time". I had no idea what project I was being rewarded for (and the person doing the rewarding didn't know either). Under the circumstances, the hammer couldn't be said to constitute much of an incentive (you've got to know which of your deeds are being rewarded, after all). But it was a damn fine hammer.
I was once asked to come up with ideas to reward tech writers for superior job performance. That one was easygift certificates to Amazon (back when it only sold books). That worked fairly well. I always tried to come up with motivators that I would want if I were to win one. Tools (of the hardware store variety) were never on the list.
While I can see ones reason for taking their frustration out on the TSA agents, this type of response will likely have the opposite effect. The TSA agents are acting as directed. To affect change we need to work to change the laws and regulations.
"Acting as directed", huh? That's some sort of excuse? I prefer a direct bottom up approach (so to speak). All that is necessary to effect change is to make all these dumb jerks quit their jobs. You can't get to the policy-makers, and no political party is interested in changing Security Theater. But you can make a difference every time you go through the airport security checkpoint by letting them know just how you feel about them. We create change...one TSA grunt at a time.
I long ago realized that success in standardized tests does not come from giving the correct answers; you must deduce what the author of the test believed to be the correct answer. Usually, you can find an answer that corresponds to popular belief; that's the one you pick. If a question has no correct answers, or the choices presented contain several conceivably correct answers, you just have to figure out which answer would be obviously true to a guy with a degree in education or psychology. I always scored in the 99th percentile using this technique.
I'm unfamiliar with software-defined radio, and I don't want to spent 20 minutes watching a video. I hate this trend of using a video for something that could be explained in text that I could read in a fraction of the time.
Amen, brother. I figured that my aversion to video "tutorials" or "reviews" or whatever was just cranky old me being out of touch with the rest of the world again, so I wasn't going to say anything. But yeah, I am very sick of people talking and mugging for the camera instead of just writing a couple of clear concise paragraphs. The written word is random access. I can quickly skim a few paragraphs to see if this is what I'm looking for, I can read a lot faster than some fool can talk, and I if I just need one particular piece of information I can find it much more quickly in a written document than a video. I reserve particular disgust for people who try to demonstrate complex procedures, but have no idea about lighting or camera angle, so that the critical stuff is always done either in murky darkness or hidden behind the guy's hand.
Videos suck time. You have to sit in front of the monitor and watch while some guy natters on about whatever the subject is. Even if the video truly contains important reference information, you can't just watch it once, then later quickly go back to the critical part that you forgot. You have to try to find the right place to start playing the video. Again. You can't search a video for key-words. You can't print a video for later reference, or print a page to give to a friend who has a similar problem, and needs just a bit of key information. You can just send him the link, and invite him to waste his time.
What I truly fear is that the trend to videos is just another sign of cultural degeneration: it is part of the decline of literacy, of regard for the written word, and of the analytical thought that is possible only by means of the written word. So I don't look for a reversal of this trend any time soon. It's just going to get worse, along with everything else.
Google does not limit what extensions are loaded into Chrome. Therefore, anyone can make another ad block extension for Chrome. And Chrome is open source (well mostly), so if Google actually does this, we could fork Chromium and call it a day. I believe ad-free browsing is safe (for both you and me, I have had AdBlock in chrome for a very long time- Slashdot excluded of course:-D)
I didn't know Chromium was open source. Maybe we are safe, as you say, and I can check this item off my paranoid worry list. I guess maybe the Google business model factors in the fact that most users aren't savvy enough to install an ad-blocker...or maybe most users don't hate ads as viscerally as we. Slashdot excluded? I keep seeing their offer to let me use Slashdot without ads, but it hardly seems necessary, as I never see any. Oh, wait...
Hmm. I just checked, and there is AdBlock (and AdBlock +) for Chrome. OK...not so bad, right? But what guarantee is there that these plugins will keep working after FireFox is dead and gone? Remember, we're blocking Google's revenue stream here, right?
Use another browser and don't stress about major changes ever.
Yeah, Firefox seems to have been taken over by idiots—or maybe they're really working for Google. The problem with using other browsers is that I haven't figured out how to get add-ons for those other browsers that will prevent me from having ads flashed in my face constantly. Strange, huh? To me, having animated ads all over the place when I'm browsing = watching TV. It's just that bad—and just that useless to me. I can't read text when images are flashing next to it.
Have people forgotten that the whole point of Firefox was its freedom from corporate interests? And that Microsoft is not the only corporation we should want to be free of? Do people think that Google launched Chrome with any other intention than to kill off Firefox, which allows us to ignore Google's major source of revenue...targeted obnoxious animated ads?
I wonder, can you hold your breath in space? Or does your chest feel like it's getting crushed until you let the breath out? Or would it feel like you have too much air in your lungs because of the negative pressure? I've heard that divers need to let breath out as they rise.
Indeed! As a long-time science fiction reader, I have been puzzled (for an equally long time) about what really happens when a person is exposed to the vacuum of space sans a protective suit. It's a standard plot development that the evil space pirates either threaten to cycle their hapless victims out the air lock, or some horrible misunderstanding leads to a minor character accidentally spacing himself—perhaps as the deserved consequence of failing to heed prominent written instructions. (DO NOT TURN THIS WHEEL UNLESS WEARING APPROVED SPACE SUIT! ) To properly evaluate the dangers, should we ever be offered the opportunity of a space cruise—and the concomittant risk of abduction by space pirates or signs written in an unknown language—it is imperative that we know: exactly what happens if you get spaced? What are the odds of living through it? Would you want to live through it?
Regrettably, Science fiction writers are no help at all in answering these questions—they just can't agree on a standard scenario. Some authors seem to think you can hold your breath and maybe survive long enough to jump to a nearby spaceship (presumably crewed by non-pirates), while others have the hapless victims explode, or have blood spectacularly boiling out of all their bodily orifices while their eyeballs freeze solid. Some of the more prissy authors just have their red-shirts asphyxiate. It is especially scandalous that, after spending so many billions of dollars on our (non-fictional) space program, we have no hard data that could settle the question. Something must be done!
Well no, I'm not volunteering, of course. If I die, I won't learn anything.
Nope, Thomas Covenant hasn't been forgotten—no matter how hard I try.
I read all but the most recent one, and kept asking myself why I didn't stop. This author has the ability to suck you into reading books about characters that you hate. It's a rare talent, luckily.
Incidentally, the GP didn't get modded down; he posted as Anonymous Coward. How apt.
This pentalogy (quintology?) by Sherwood Smith and Dave Trowbridge is something I'm re-reading at the moment. It came out in the nineties, and it's even better than I remember. It's a great story that contains a lot of well-worn space opera tropes, some of which I would have sworn could never work until I saw them work in this book. We've got a lazy good-for-nothing (but is he?) royal heir who suddenly winds up next in the line of succession due to a well-orchestrated series of assassinations, we've got space pirates, weird sex (among space pirates), telepathic aliens who can cook people's brains and make them explode out their eyes (eeeew!), aliens who are single-personality triplets and communicate with humanity only on the basis of old Three Stooges TV shows, an Evil Ruthless Conqueror, an Evil Ruthless Conqueror's Son (but is he really thoroughly evil?), we've got oodles of plots and counterplots. This list may be boring, but the books are not! The major characters all have depth, and some of them are not quite evil, while others are not quite good.
These books are pure fun, but they seem to have been pretty much ignored when they came out, and certainly aren't talked about much today. Unlike many books written over a decade ago, they have aged very well. The authors took care to draw the background in such a way that you seldom come across jarring references to what is today outmoded technology. The Exordium books are out of print, but can still be had at online used bookseller sites. The five volumes are:
The Phoenix in Flight
Ruler of Naught
A Prison Unsought
The Rifter's Covenant
The Thrones of Kronos
Sherwood Smith has written some other novels, some of which I liked and some of which I hated. Trowbridge does not seem to have ever written anything else. One can only hope that the two collaborate again some day! Meanwhile, get these five books and enjoy!
Anyway -- "patriot" and "traitor" are semantically null terms. The positive or negative connotations conferred by each term are completely determined by the context in which they are used. George Washington and Ben Franklin were "traitors" to the exact same extent that they were "patriots;" whether or not one approves of their actions is determined by one's POV, and only by one's POV. A game that promotes one POV over another risks alienating a significant portion of the target demographic. I doubt Ubisoft is going to let that happen -- look at what happened when a certain game company decided to allow players to play from the Taliban POV successfully against American soldiers.
I'm not sure what you mean by "semantically null". I suspect perhaps you are asserting that these words are meaningless. Maybe you think that these words are meaningless because one can view George Washington as a traitor or a patriot, depending on one's opinion on the matter. Today, some people say Obama is a traitor; others disagree. However, if "patriot" and "traitor" were meaningless, one could neither hold nor discuss such views. One could not even have what you call a "POV" on the matter.
You can't simply declare words "null" as your whim takes you, unless you want to stop talking or thinking altogether.
The proper generic name for such corporations is, by ancient usage, "mercenaries" or perhaps "mercenary contractors".
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Well, it's a group of people that are legally a single person, united for purposes of some commercial enterprise. I realize that's way oversimplified, but the best I can do with such limited space and ambition. Or were you objecting to something else entirely? Try to be clear and concise in your writing. Do not assume that your reader can read your mind, he's just got the text.
The story lists the tasks that might be taken over by private companies:
That seems like pretty much the entire job description short of actual Arrest. (The Detaining Suspects bit may mean running the jail, or arrest, its unclear).
The good side of this is you might have more luck suing a corporation than the constabulary. (No clue about UK law here, just a guess). And when the public becomes unsatisfied its much easier for city government to cancel the contract and find a new firm. The new guys will probably be on their best behavior for a few months at least.
Its not unheard of to find private police forces employed by some jurisdictions in the US. And its not unheard of the have entire companies fired. An incident in a Seattle transit hub eventually lead to fines and term termination of their contract.
Several points about the case you cite are of interest. As mentioned in TFA, the security company employees were following standing orders not to intervene, but merely to observe. These orders were issued at the behest of the Seattle City Council. As a result of the unfavorable publicity surrounding the event, however, the Council was left contemplating a change in policy amid some hand-wringing. Consider what would have happened if Seattle city police offers had responded in an inappropriate way: there would have been an actual political impact. City employees would have been fired and the City Council would have come under heavy criticism, leading to possible resignations. By hiring private security companies—no matter whether they are given police powers or not—governments themselves escape responsibility for the actions of those private corporations. If something goes wrong, then someone else is to blame, never the government.
Blackwater was renamed Xe. However, it is important to note that the founder and CEO during the Iraq war sold off the company and is no longer involved.
I have to ask why you think that is important. To my mind, the important issue lies in the fact that companies like Xe exist and are contracted by the U.S. Government at all; the personal culpability of the former CEO of the Company Formerly Known As... is, to me, relatively trivial.
The proper generic name for such corporations is, by ancient usage, "mercenaries" or perhaps "mercenary contractors". The fact that modern States now once more employ mercenaries signifies a distinct decline in the State as an institution, because one of the essential characteristics of a State is that it holds a monopoly on violence. By hiring mercenaries, states essentially solve short-term problems (inability to sustain a war through conscription, direct responsibility for atrocities, etc.), but create another set of problems the extent of which is not immediately obvious. One such problem is that once the State becomes reliant on mercenaries, it is at their mercy—something Machiavelli understood quite well.
Snow Crash! (A science fiction novel by Neal Stephenson; it did a good job forecasting this trend...and satirizing it.)
The Israeli military historian, Martin Van Creveld, also noted the trend toward privatization of state functions in the early nineties. (See for example, the The Transformation of War and the somewhat ponderous The Rise and Decline of the State.) As he predicted, the European-model nation-state continues to decline; as it weakens, it transfers its powers to private entities, and its sovereignty to more nebulous institutions that are not nation-states at all (such as the European Union, NATO, the UN, etc.) This in turn leads to a loss of faith in the nation-state by its citizens, until the state's government is no longer seen as legitimate. Not surprisingly, van Creveld is a fan of Snow Crash.
This has also been happening in the U.S., most prominently during the recent Iraqi Infelicity. As you may remember, the U.S. State Department outsourced its security operations to The Company Formerly Known As "Blackwater" during this time. This led to a fiasco in which a team from said organization—which was "protecting" a State Department delegation—shot up a crowd of harmless civilians with automatic weapons fire from armored vehicles, causing numerous death and mild embarrassment to the U.S. State Department. They should have been much more embarrassed, of course—official heads should have rolled—but such actions no longer have their just consequences. The U.S. Army also worked with TCFKAB and similar organizations with names like Triple Canopy, Executive Outcomes (I think that's defunct, actually), and companies smarter than TCFKAB who don't try to get business through publicizing their names. Of course, TCFKAB is still in business, under another name that I can't at the moment recall, probably because that name was designed to be impossible to remember. In addition to outright combat, other civilian agencies pretty much have taken over the role of providing the U.S. Army's infrastructure, and the entire "re-construction" of Iraq was handled by large corporations in a most unseemly manner.
So why is everyone surprised when the Brits want to outsource a bit of policing?
What kind of DRM is this anti-consumer company handcuffing their cash cow with? Will it be another always-on internet connection, preventing a single-player game from working on a laptop when you travel, your internet service is down for maintenance, you moved and haven't gotten your internet service established, or just plain don't like having some company track when and where you play your games?
They do sh*t like that? And people buy those games? Wow. Of course, I'm a very conservative gamer—I'm still playing the original Everquest. And yes, I know about Sony...and um...I guess having an internet connection is kinda obligatory when you are playing an MMORPG. Seriously, I kind of liked the look of a game my daughter was playing ("Skyrim" or something), until I found out she had to slavishly log in to Steam to play this single player game. No way.
I just talked to daughter. She says there's an "offline mode" for the game that allows playing without being mind-melded with Steam, but she's never tried it. Where have I gone wrong?
I know Slashdotters reflexively make anti-US statements every time the US is even mentioned, but I'm really struggling to see the relevance of this complaint.
The topic is a game that has the American Revolution as its background. An American might surely be forgiven if the word "patriotism" comes to mind in that context. As I pointed out in my reply to the original poster, he is in error when he equates patriotism with nationalism. I think that this discussion is well within the bounds of the topic.
Incidentally, I currently have moderator points, so I'm faced with the usual dilemma: do I comment, or mod? I prefer to comment. I'm wondering if there should not be a sanctioned way to have your cake and eat it too: abolish the rule that you can't comment if you have modded anything in the thread. To prevent abuse, the fact that you have modded the thread should be pointed out (e.g. "modded OP -1 Flamebait" after your name and slashdot number). Heck, maybe commenting should be compulsory after you mod...maybe you should have to justify why you modded a post up or down.
I have little doubt that the flag-waving "patriotism" the government and media was pushing...
I think you're making the serious—but all too common error—of confusing patriotism with nationalism. This error is especially easy to make because nationalists like to say that they are patriots.
Patriotism is love of one's country; it is defensive in nature. Nationalism is the wish to subject other countries and peoples to the dominion of one's country. Where patriotism is passive, nationalism is aggressive, and—if successful—turns into imperialism. I am a conservative and a patriot. If I did not love America, I would not be living here. However, I hate the strident imperialist policies of this country's current and recent governments. I hate the wars that have been engendered by ambition, money, and calculated scheming on the part of that government (or series of "administrations", if you like).
I do what I can to oppose those policies, but the majority view is against me. This is a democracy, so we are all responsible. When the we reap the whirlwind that is engendered by the winds we have sown, it will touch us all. Though I speak out against my government's policies, I am still responsible for them, and deserve to bear their consequences. "Let those who have ears, hear"
See also "time-sharing", "client-server" and "thin clients". Much of the evolution of computers has been a power struggle between centralization by technology producers and decentralization by users. "The cloud" is just more of the same.
But which is it? Are we centralizing or decentralizing right now? I tend to lose track. As far as I know, the current "cloud" talk mostly means "storage of your data on our servers". I've seen it used this way a lot in the "smart phone" context. I'm guessing that because we don't know where the servers are, we're supposed to think this is a form of decentralization. As if vagueness were the same as decentralization! We send our data off into the great unknown, and...well...that's a decentralized as it gets, right?
Not really, of course; it's jargon that is intended to get people to think that they're storing their data on neutral, trustworthy servers. If the instructions actually said "back up your personal data to the Google (or Apple) server", then we might ask if we can really trust Gapple with that data . But if we keep our stuff in a cloud...well, who asks about the integrity of clouds?
The other way I've heard "cloud" used is as a form of wishful thinking that features programs executing on unspecified servers, along with our data. Of course, if the wish comes true, it will be Gapple servers that run the programs and keep the data, but we won't be troubled with that level of detail. (For all I know, this sense of "cloud computing" has already been implemented, and everybody is doing it—and I'm just so totally out of it that I haven't noticed.)
For what it's worth, I saw fluffy things labeled "The Cloud" on gee-whiz marketing slides for a super-computing company I used to work for back in 1998. Nobody knew what it was, of course (yes, I asked, bad move if you cared whether Marketing liked you). I'd say it was—and is—a marketing meme trying to push its way into reality.
Slashdot Mirror
Philosophy can be integrated into the curriculum as early as Elementary school, and has wonderful effects that extend beyond developing reasoning skills.
Yes, that would make sense...but where would you find qualified teachers? Schools tend to hire the products of their own system, therefore if the schools are deficient, their graduates will share the deficiency.
I taught philosophy, both as a Teaching Assistant at a major State university while in grad school and at a 2 year "community college" while I was looking for a university teaching job. I found that 90% of the undergraduates in my classes could not effectively express themselves in writing. Many of them could not construct a grammatically correct sentence. The ability to organize thoughts into paragraphs and to carry a line of thought to some sort of logical conclusion was within the ability of only that top 10% of my students.
This was not only a problem with the written word, but also of reading comprehension. For example, I found that the majority of students could not tell the difference between views that a writer was advocating and those views he cited only so that he could oppose them. Very few of them knew how to read critically, even how to tell the difference between a statement that was supported by an argument and a mere assertion. They had trouble recognizing arguments, let alone evaluating them for relevance or for obvious fallacies.
I did the best I could, but my ability to help these students was limited by their lack of the basics of education. Clearly, their 12 years of public school had been largely wasted time, and I was not going to fix this in one semester.
I'm not optimistic about being able to fix this problem, as the American educational system is pretty much a bloated self-serving mechanism that runs on its own inertia (and the excessive funds it extorts from the public). It ought to be fixed in English and Science classes beginning at a very early age after students have mastered the basics—reading, writing and arithmetic. Both sorts of classes should concentrate on the basics of critical thinking; they should stress the idea that assertions must be supported by reasons. English should equip students with the ability to read critically and to coherently express their thinking both orally and in writing. Science should teach how to observe, how to draw conclusions from those observations, and how to test those conclusions. That's how it should be. I'm not holding my breath.
... I felt like I was looking at real person when Charlie was looking in the mirror and saw the thing in his eye. Creepy as fuck. The cesarian was also creepy as fuck in 3D as well, not because of in your face effects, but because you really felt as if you were right there looking at real people. That's the future of 3D: subtle enhancement.
That's funny—I've never felt that I'm looking at unreal people when I was watching a 2D movie. I never said to myself, "Self, wouldn't it be nice if these characters looked like real people?". Tastes differ, of course; but I wonder if you aren't praising an interesting visual effect, rather than enjoying the movie more because of that effect. When I'm totally immersed in a movie (that is to say, when I am watching a very good movie), I don't usually think about the cinematographic techniques that are being employed. In fact, if I notice the techniques as such, that's a sign that I'm not really immersed in the movie. Usually, that's because it's a bad movie.
I suppose that the market place will eventually decide whether 3D-ness is worth enough to most people so that they will pay extra for it.
I've got a bad feeling about the Hobbit movie anyway—they cast a youngish good-looking guy as Thorin Oakenshield. WTF? Thorin Oakenshield was, at his best, a belligerent chauvinist curmudgeon. He hated elves and coveted jewelry. He was not a younger and sexier Gandalf, like the guy I saw in the trailers. I have a feeling that the characters will be two-dimensional, regardless of whether you see the movie in 3D or not. But I hope I'm wrong.
The very idea of microstamping was never intended to assist law enforcement. It was specifically intended to target lawful gun owners to cause them harassment and extra expense and to better "track the law-abiding citizenry".
Agreed. The requirement that it should be shown to actually work has never been a deterrent to passing dumb laws, especially gun laws. I suspect the real interest for the anti-gun people here is the bureaucracy and procedures that will be required to track the "specially imprinted" firing pins. First, you'll have to establish a registry that ties each purchaser of a gun so equipped to the code imprinted on the gun's firing pin. This means a huge database and the additional staff to make it work. Also, replacing a firing pin is fairly simple, and replacement firing pins are easily obtainable. I've replaced a few myself, along with other miscellaneous gun parts. So you'll have to register and track each firing pin.
Some of those card numbers belonged to people. If I'd gotten a real job right out of college I woulda been one of the first to buy their service. It was $99 a year, and I was too poor/cheap to swing it.
I doubt many of those people were actually screwed by the hack. Contesting charges is not hard. The last analysis I saw actually indicated that the charities Anon "gasve" money to actually lost out on the deal because they had to process both the payment and cancelling the payments.
Yeah, and I was one of those people to whom one of those credit card numbers belonged. I got a deeply discounted membership to Stratfor for a year, but then didn't renew it because I didn't think their news service was worth $99 per annum. While I didn't get any false charges on my credit card, I was inconvenienced by the perpetrators of this hack because my bank cancelled my credit card, and required me to get a new one. I then had to contact to everyone who was automatically billing my charges to that credit card, and give them the new number. Inevitably, I missed a couple, and got some late charges. It wasn't a disaster, but it was certainly inconvenient.
What really angers me about incidents of this type is the tone of moral superiority taken by their perpetrators and certain members of the community who support them. Somehow, these faceless actors are ascribed the right to judge which people and which organizations are evil, and to mete out punishment accordingly. If they have such a right, then we will soon arrive at the stage where no one has any rights.
nimbius is fine.
The confused people are the ones who titled the article LulzSec. Jeremy Hammond may be LulzSec, but he's being charged with the Stratfor hack, and that was done by Anonymous.
Your reasoning is a bit unclear. Let me try to help: We know who Jeremy Hammond is, so he is not anonymous. Because he is not anonymous, he could not possibly have perpetrated any crime attributed to the anonymous Anonymous.. Did I get that right?
money...Plain and simple, THAT is my motivator at work.
Lots of studies have shown money is not a great motivator.
It's certainly not the only motivator. I've left well-paid jobs because I felt that my work was pointless. I've also left jobs because I felt underpaid. Money is not the only motivator, but it's certainly a major consideration.
Trinkets do not help either. One of the few things I do think can be a motivator is control - as a reward instead of cash or gifts, give the employes some more control over their life at work.
Heh. I was once handed a massive (and rather high quality) framing hammer as my "reward" for "helping to complete the project on time". I had no idea what project I was being rewarded for (and the person doing the rewarding didn't know either). Under the circumstances, the hammer couldn't be said to constitute much of an incentive (you've got to know which of your deeds are being rewarded, after all). But it was a damn fine hammer.
I was once asked to come up with ideas to reward tech writers for superior job performance. That one was easygift certificates to Amazon (back when it only sold books). That worked fairly well. I always tried to come up with motivators that I would want if I were to win one. Tools (of the hardware store variety) were never on the list.
While I can see ones reason for taking their frustration out on the TSA agents, this type of response will likely have the opposite effect. The TSA agents are acting as directed. To affect change we need to work to change the laws and regulations.
"Acting as directed", huh? That's some sort of excuse? I prefer a direct bottom up approach (so to speak). All that is necessary to effect change is to make all these dumb jerks quit their jobs. You can't get to the policy-makers, and no political party is interested in changing Security Theater. But you can make a difference every time you go through the airport security checkpoint by letting them know just how you feel about them. We create change...one TSA grunt at a time.
apostrophe is not needed. Nazi is already plural. Remember it's one nazus, two or more nazi
I guess that makes you a grammar nazus.
I long ago realized that success in standardized tests does not come from giving the correct answers; you must deduce what the author of the test believed to be the correct answer. Usually, you can find an answer that corresponds to popular belief; that's the one you pick. If a question has no correct answers, or the choices presented contain several conceivably correct answers, you just have to figure out which answer would be obviously true to a guy with a degree in education or psychology. I always scored in the 99th percentile using this technique.
I'm unfamiliar with software-defined radio, and I don't want to spent 20 minutes watching a video. I hate this trend of using a video for something that could be explained in text that I could read in a fraction of the time.
Amen, brother. I figured that my aversion to video "tutorials" or "reviews" or whatever was just cranky old me being out of touch with the rest of the world again, so I wasn't going to say anything. But yeah, I am very sick of people talking and mugging for the camera instead of just writing a couple of clear concise paragraphs. The written word is random access. I can quickly skim a few paragraphs to see if this is what I'm looking for, I can read a lot faster than some fool can talk, and I if I just need one particular piece of information I can find it much more quickly in a written document than a video. I reserve particular disgust for people who try to demonstrate complex procedures, but have no idea about lighting or camera angle, so that the critical stuff is always done either in murky darkness or hidden behind the guy's hand.
Videos suck time. You have to sit in front of the monitor and watch while some guy natters on about whatever the subject is. Even if the video truly contains important reference information, you can't just watch it once, then later quickly go back to the critical part that you forgot. You have to try to find the right place to start playing the video. Again. You can't search a video for key-words. You can't print a video for later reference, or print a page to give to a friend who has a similar problem, and needs just a bit of key information. You can just send him the link, and invite him to waste his time.
What I truly fear is that the trend to videos is just another sign of cultural degeneration: it is part of the decline of literacy, of regard for the written word, and of the analytical thought that is possible only by means of the written word. So I don't look for a reversal of this trend any time soon. It's just going to get worse, along with everything else.
Google does not limit what extensions are loaded into Chrome. Therefore, anyone can make another ad block extension for Chrome. And Chrome is open source (well mostly), so if Google actually does this, we could fork Chromium and call it a day. I believe ad-free browsing is safe (for both you and me, I have had AdBlock in chrome for a very long time- Slashdot excluded of course :-D)
I didn't know Chromium was open source. Maybe we are safe, as you say, and I can check this item off my paranoid worry list. I guess maybe the Google business model factors in the fact that most users aren't savvy enough to install an ad-blocker...or maybe most users don't hate ads as viscerally as we. Slashdot excluded? I keep seeing their offer to let me use Slashdot without ads, but it hardly seems necessary, as I never see any. Oh, wait...
Hmm. I just checked, and there is AdBlock (and AdBlock +) for Chrome. OK...not so bad, right? But what guarantee is there that these plugins will keep working after FireFox is dead and gone? Remember, we're blocking Google's revenue stream here, right?
Use another browser and don't stress about major changes ever.
Yeah, Firefox seems to have been taken over by idiots—or maybe they're really working for Google. The problem with using other browsers is that I haven't figured out how to get add-ons for those other browsers that will prevent me from having ads flashed in my face constantly. Strange, huh? To me, having animated ads all over the place when I'm browsing = watching TV. It's just that bad—and just that useless to me. I can't read text when images are flashing next to it.
Have people forgotten that the whole point of Firefox was its freedom from corporate interests? And that Microsoft is not the only corporation we should want to be free of? Do people think that Google launched Chrome with any other intention than to kill off Firefox, which allows us to ignore Google's major source of revenue...targeted obnoxious animated ads?
I wonder, can you hold your breath in space? Or does your chest feel like it's getting crushed until you let the breath out? Or would it feel like you have too much air in your lungs because of the negative pressure? I've heard that divers need to let breath out as they rise.
Indeed! As a long-time science fiction reader, I have been puzzled (for an equally long time) about what really happens when a person is exposed to the vacuum of space sans a protective suit. It's a standard plot development that the evil space pirates either threaten to cycle their hapless victims out the air lock, or some horrible misunderstanding leads to a minor character accidentally spacing himself—perhaps as the deserved consequence of failing to heed prominent written instructions. ( DO NOT TURN THIS WHEEL UNLESS WEARING APPROVED SPACE SUIT! ) To properly evaluate the dangers, should we ever be offered the opportunity of a space cruise—and the concomittant risk of abduction by space pirates or signs written in an unknown language—it is imperative that we know: exactly what happens if you get spaced? What are the odds of living through it? Would you want to live through it?
Regrettably, Science fiction writers are no help at all in answering these questions—they just can't agree on a standard scenario. Some authors seem to think you can hold your breath and maybe survive long enough to jump to a nearby spaceship (presumably crewed by non-pirates), while others have the hapless victims explode, or have blood spectacularly boiling out of all their bodily orifices while their eyeballs freeze solid. Some of the more prissy authors just have their red-shirts asphyxiate. It is especially scandalous that, after spending so many billions of dollars on our (non-fictional) space program, we have no hard data that could settle the question. Something must be done!
Well no, I'm not volunteering, of course. If I die, I won't learn anything.
Nope, Thomas Covenant hasn't been forgotten—no matter how hard I try.
I read all but the most recent one, and kept asking myself why I didn't stop. This author has the ability to suck you into reading books about characters that you hate. It's a rare talent, luckily.
Incidentally, the GP didn't get modded down; he posted as Anonymous Coward. How apt.
This pentalogy (quintology?) by Sherwood Smith and Dave Trowbridge is something I'm re-reading at the moment. It came out in the nineties, and it's even better than I remember. It's a great story that contains a lot of well-worn space opera tropes, some of which I would have sworn could never work until I saw them work in this book. We've got a lazy good-for-nothing (but is he?) royal heir who suddenly winds up next in the line of succession due to a well-orchestrated series of assassinations, we've got space pirates, weird sex (among space pirates), telepathic aliens who can cook people's brains and make them explode out their eyes (eeeew!), aliens who are single-personality triplets and communicate with humanity only on the basis of old Three Stooges TV shows, an Evil Ruthless Conqueror, an Evil Ruthless Conqueror's Son (but is he really thoroughly evil?), we've got oodles of plots and counterplots. This list may be boring, but the books are not! The major characters all have depth, and some of them are not quite evil, while others are not quite good.
These books are pure fun, but they seem to have been pretty much ignored when they came out, and certainly aren't talked about much today. Unlike many books written over a decade ago, they have aged very well. The authors took care to draw the background in such a way that you seldom come across jarring references to what is today outmoded technology. The Exordium books are out of print, but can still be had at online used bookseller sites. The five volumes are:
Sherwood Smith has written some other novels, some of which I liked and some of which I hated. Trowbridge does not seem to have ever written anything else. One can only hope that the two collaborate again some day! Meanwhile, get these five books and enjoy!
Anyway -- "patriot" and "traitor" are semantically null terms. The positive or negative connotations conferred by each term are completely determined by the context in which they are used. George Washington and Ben Franklin were "traitors" to the exact same extent that they were "patriots;" whether or not one approves of their actions is determined by one's POV, and only by one's POV. A game that promotes one POV over another risks alienating a significant portion of the target demographic. I doubt Ubisoft is going to let that happen -- look at what happened when a certain game company decided to allow players to play from the Taliban POV successfully against American soldiers.
I'm not sure what you mean by "semantically null". I suspect perhaps you are asserting that these words are meaningless. Maybe you think that these words are meaningless because one can view George Washington as a traitor or a patriot, depending on one's opinion on the matter. Today, some people say Obama is a traitor; others disagree. However, if "patriot" and "traitor" were meaningless, one could neither hold nor discuss such views. One could not even have what you call a "POV" on the matter.
You can't simply declare words "null" as your whim takes you, unless you want to stop talking or thinking altogether.
The proper generic name for such corporations is, by ancient usage, "mercenaries" or perhaps "mercenary contractors".
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Well, it's a group of people that are legally a single person, united for purposes of some commercial enterprise. I realize that's way oversimplified, but the best I can do with such limited space and ambition. Or were you objecting to something else entirely? Try to be clear and concise in your writing. Do not assume that your reader can read your mind, he's just got the text.
The story lists the tasks that might be taken over by private companies:
That seems like pretty much the entire job description short of actual Arrest. (The Detaining Suspects bit may mean running the jail, or arrest, its unclear).
The good side of this is you might have more luck suing a corporation than the constabulary. (No clue about UK law here, just a guess). And when the public becomes unsatisfied its much easier for city government to cancel the contract and find a new firm. The new guys will probably be on their best behavior for a few months at least.
Its not unheard of to find private police forces employed by some jurisdictions in the US. And its not unheard of the have entire companies fired. An incident in a Seattle transit hub eventually lead to fines and term termination of their contract.
Several points about the case you cite are of interest. As mentioned in TFA, the security company employees were following standing orders not to intervene, but merely to observe. These orders were issued at the behest of the Seattle City Council. As a result of the unfavorable publicity surrounding the event, however, the Council was left contemplating a change in policy amid some hand-wringing. Consider what would have happened if Seattle city police offers had responded in an inappropriate way: there would have been an actual political impact. City employees would have been fired and the City Council would have come under heavy criticism, leading to possible resignations. By hiring private security companies—no matter whether they are given police powers or not—governments themselves escape responsibility for the actions of those private corporations. If something goes wrong, then someone else is to blame, never the government.
Blackwater was renamed Xe. However, it is important to note that the founder and CEO during the Iraq war sold off the company and is no longer involved.
I have to ask why you think that is important. To my mind, the important issue lies in the fact that companies like Xe exist and are contracted by the U.S. Government at all; the personal culpability of the former CEO of the Company Formerly Known As... is, to me, relatively trivial.
The proper generic name for such corporations is, by ancient usage, "mercenaries" or perhaps "mercenary contractors". The fact that modern States now once more employ mercenaries signifies a distinct decline in the State as an institution, because one of the essential characteristics of a State is that it holds a monopoly on violence. By hiring mercenaries, states essentially solve short-term problems (inability to sustain a war through conscription, direct responsibility for atrocities, etc.), but create another set of problems the extent of which is not immediately obvious. One such problem is that once the State becomes reliant on mercenaries, it is at their mercy—something Machiavelli understood quite well.
Snow Crash! (A science fiction novel by Neal Stephenson; it did a good job forecasting this trend...and satirizing it.)
The Israeli military historian, Martin Van Creveld, also noted the trend toward privatization of state functions in the early nineties. (See for example, the The Transformation of War and the somewhat ponderous The Rise and Decline of the State.) As he predicted, the European-model nation-state continues to decline; as it weakens, it transfers its powers to private entities, and its sovereignty to more nebulous institutions that are not nation-states at all (such as the European Union, NATO, the UN, etc.) This in turn leads to a loss of faith in the nation-state by its citizens, until the state's government is no longer seen as legitimate. Not surprisingly, van Creveld is a fan of Snow Crash.
This has also been happening in the U.S., most prominently during the recent Iraqi Infelicity. As you may remember, the U.S. State Department outsourced its security operations to The Company Formerly Known As "Blackwater" during this time. This led to a fiasco in which a team from said organization—which was "protecting" a State Department delegation—shot up a crowd of harmless civilians with automatic weapons fire from armored vehicles, causing numerous death and mild embarrassment to the U.S. State Department. They should have been much more embarrassed, of course—official heads should have rolled—but such actions no longer have their just consequences. The U.S. Army also worked with TCFKAB and similar organizations with names like Triple Canopy, Executive Outcomes (I think that's defunct, actually), and companies smarter than TCFKAB who don't try to get business through publicizing their names. Of course, TCFKAB is still in business, under another name that I can't at the moment recall, probably because that name was designed to be impossible to remember. In addition to outright combat, other civilian agencies pretty much have taken over the role of providing the U.S. Army's infrastructure, and the entire "re-construction" of Iraq was handled by large corporations in a most unseemly manner.
So why is everyone surprised when the Brits want to outsource a bit of policing?
What kind of DRM is this anti-consumer company handcuffing their cash cow with? Will it be another always-on internet connection, preventing a single-player game from working on a laptop when you travel, your internet service is down for maintenance, you moved and haven't gotten your internet service established, or just plain don't like having some company track when and where you play your games?
They do sh*t like that? And people buy those games? Wow. Of course, I'm a very conservative gamer—I'm still playing the original Everquest. And yes, I know about Sony...and um...I guess having an internet connection is kinda obligatory when you are playing an MMORPG. Seriously, I kind of liked the look of a game my daughter was playing ("Skyrim" or something), until I found out she had to slavishly log in to Steam to play this single player game. No way.
I just talked to daughter. She says there's an "offline mode" for the game that allows playing without being mind-melded with Steam, but she's never tried it. Where have I gone wrong?
I know Slashdotters reflexively make anti-US statements every time the US is even mentioned, but I'm really struggling to see the relevance of this complaint.
The topic is a game that has the American Revolution as its background. An American might surely be forgiven if the word "patriotism" comes to mind in that context. As I pointed out in my reply to the original poster, he is in error when he equates patriotism with nationalism. I think that this discussion is well within the bounds of the topic.
Incidentally, I currently have moderator points, so I'm faced with the usual dilemma: do I comment, or mod? I prefer to comment. I'm wondering if there should not be a sanctioned way to have your cake and eat it too: abolish the rule that you can't comment if you have modded anything in the thread. To prevent abuse, the fact that you have modded the thread should be pointed out (e.g. "modded OP -1 Flamebait" after your name and slashdot number). Heck, maybe commenting should be compulsory after you mod...maybe you should have to justify why you modded a post up or down.
I have little doubt that the flag-waving "patriotism" the government and media was pushing ...
I think you're making the serious—but all too common error—of confusing patriotism with nationalism. This error is especially easy to make because nationalists like to say that they are patriots.
Patriotism is love of one's country; it is defensive in nature. Nationalism is the wish to subject other countries and peoples to the dominion of one's country. Where patriotism is passive, nationalism is aggressive, and—if successful—turns into imperialism. I am a conservative and a patriot. If I did not love America, I would not be living here. However, I hate the strident imperialist policies of this country's current and recent governments. I hate the wars that have been engendered by ambition, money, and calculated scheming on the part of that government (or series of "administrations", if you like).
I do what I can to oppose those policies, but the majority view is against me. This is a democracy, so we are all responsible. When the we reap the whirlwind that is engendered by the winds we have sown, it will touch us all. Though I speak out against my government's policies, I am still responsible for them, and deserve to bear their consequences. "Let those who have ears, hear"
See also "time-sharing", "client-server" and "thin clients". Much of the evolution of computers has been a power struggle between centralization by technology producers and decentralization by users. "The cloud" is just more of the same.
But which is it? Are we centralizing or decentralizing right now? I tend to lose track. As far as I know, the current "cloud" talk mostly means "storage of your data on our servers". I've seen it used this way a lot in the "smart phone" context. I'm guessing that because we don't know where the servers are, we're supposed to think this is a form of decentralization. As if vagueness were the same as decentralization! We send our data off into the great unknown, and...well...that's a decentralized as it gets, right?
Not really, of course; it's jargon that is intended to get people to think that they're storing their data on neutral, trustworthy servers. If the instructions actually said "back up your personal data to the Google (or Apple) server", then we might ask if we can really trust Gapple with that data . But if we keep our stuff in a cloud...well, who asks about the integrity of clouds?
The other way I've heard "cloud" used is as a form of wishful thinking that features programs executing on unspecified servers, along with our data. Of course, if the wish comes true, it will be Gapple servers that run the programs and keep the data, but we won't be troubled with that level of detail. (For all I know, this sense of "cloud computing" has already been implemented, and everybody is doing it—and I'm just so totally out of it that I haven't noticed.)
For what it's worth, I saw fluffy things labeled "The Cloud" on gee-whiz marketing slides for a super-computing company I used to work for back in 1998. Nobody knew what it was, of course (yes, I asked, bad move if you cared whether Marketing liked you). I'd say it was—and is—a marketing meme trying to push its way into reality.