Who the hell is so stupid that they would just do what a random person calling them tells them to do?
You don't really understand how conmen work do you? With the huge increase in the number of people with computers, there will inevitably be a lot of people with almos zero IT knowledge. If you tell them plausibly enough you are ringing from "Microsoft Techinical Support" some people will fall for it.
Everyone is stupid at something. They work different cons with people who are inexperienced with credit cards, car mechanics, investing in shares, women, or whatever.
For a moment in history (the '90s, basically, tapering off in the early '00s) humankind underwent a massive technological transformation.
Sadly, the technological transformation has not resulted in any great political, social or economic transformation for the better. It was a nice idea, but all it's really done is opened up a new way for large corporations to advertise and/or make money.
Believing that making money is the most important thing in the world, and Trumps [*] any other moral consideration IS an ideology, it's just that as a conservative/right wing loon you can't see it.
It's like being at a party with a few musicians and guitars being passed around - alive, something that hangs on the air and has breath... a feeling of "something special is happening here"
However, the long term consequences of the decision wouldn’t be clear for years.
Consequences like the MTV "Jersey Shore" banner ad on this article.
If you choose to view ads, it's a bit futile then complaining about them. All advertising is shit, the only question is whether you will put up with x amount of annoyance in return for viewing stuff for nothing (if they are somehow unblockable).
Hacker News [ycombinator.com] has "News for Startups". Many/. articles show up there first. The community has, generally, far fewer commentators and much less humor.
"Slashdot without the humour." Yeah, that'll work well.
No they don't. Judging by my parents' generation I'd say more like 70 - 75 as long as they were medically fairly average (but still smoked, drank too much, etc,) Their parents started declining at about 60 -65. I'm expecting to be relatively fit and mobile at 80.
My firmly held belief is that every niche no matter how small, no matter how bizarre your particular thing that you care a lot about is, there are other people out there who really want to talk about it as well. It's just that there has been no scalable way to make it happen before the Internet.
What about backflow: people who see all these niche communities, and decide to get involved with one, not out of interest in the topic, but because they need a group?
It's kind of like street gangs. At first they existed to provide protection to members, but then they became a trend in their own right, like those shirts with the little alligators on them. Does backflow affect the quality of discussion?
That's me! I only come to slashdot for the vicious rumbles and the hurried drunken sex afterwards.
The bad thing about this is now you have these groups that are big enough to permeate into mainstream society and garner enough political power to contribute to government policy (i.e. Scientology, Tea Partiers, Creationists, etc.) and de-evolve society into their way of thinking.
Yeah gee... if only everyone thought as you did. I know, FORCE everyone to think exactly like you do, and we'll have a perfect society. Because obviously no one has evolved to your higher plane of existence. It may get messy on the "forcing" part, but you can't make a great omelet without breaking eggs.
I'd go on a refresher course for Basic English Comprehension if I were you before posting any comments on an English language forum. You're just embarrassing yourself by your total failure to understand what you appear to be replying to.
GP said absolutely nothing about forcing people to think in any way; rather he was lamenting the disproportionate power to affect other people's thoughts and lives that we see nowadays in such fringe groups as he mentioned.
PS are you a creationist or tea bagger to get so worked up about this? I can't believe a scientologist would even be allowed to read slashdot.
We're either going to have to enforce "truth" (which leads to an authoritarian, totalitarian, fascist or total state) or have a pluralistic definition of truth.
Truth isn't pluralistic, opinion and interpretation are. It is objectively true whereabouts Barack Obama was born. If you want to believe he is a secret Muslim and al Qaeda operative, no one can force you not to.
What is wrong is when most people just listen to one side of the story all the time and start confusing the two.
Yes, but if everyone had had your attitude three hundred years ago we'd all still be living in monarchies, being told what to think by priests and justifying child labour, slavery, the lack of votes for women and non-landowners and so on.
I don't care what anyone says, there has been progress over that period. We have this wonderful thing called the internet now which should allow universal education and empowerment, it is not the time to start being pessimistic about the future.
Why Ron Paul and his supporters ally with the Republicans, I may never truly know or understand. But it most definitely keeps me from voting for them.
When libertarians describe themselves as "fiscally conservative, socially liberal" or whatever, they seem unable to comprehend that this is just another way of saying "I support the existing military-industrial complex and capitalist system, and would like to pay less tax so that I can buy more drugs".
Actually, you'll find that the majority believes evolution is contradicted by scientific evidence(in the United States).
That doesn't make any sense. Evolution is based on scientific evidence. It's the people who don't have scientific evidence, but do have faith and the word of God to back them up, who generally don't believe that evolution is correct.
i believe that if i vote for a candidate whom i know will almost certainly commit immoral acts then i'm complicit in those acts and no amount of other good stuff makes me a good guy in that situation, so neither candidate could get my vote.
I absolutely agree, but the moral option is not to say "the two main parties are as bad as each other so I won't vote" it is to vote for another party. And if/when they lose to start helping them build up so they will do better next time.
Slashdot Mirror
Who the hell is so stupid that they would just do what a random person calling them tells them to do?
You don't really understand how conmen work do you? With the huge increase in the number of people with computers, there will inevitably be a lot of people with almos zero IT knowledge. If you tell them plausibly enough you are ringing from "Microsoft Techinical Support" some people will fall for it.
Everyone is stupid at something. They work different cons with people who are inexperienced with credit cards, car mechanics, investing in shares, women, or whatever.
My dear old mum got them once and had them on the phone for about an hour (she was bored).
They finally hung up when she told them she had made a mistake, and the screen she was looking at was not actually a computer monitor, just the TV.
I am at the computer for my job 16+ hours a day
Get another job then.
I thought everyone used their computers nakedly, privately. :P
Only if you live on your own.
For a moment in history (the '90s, basically, tapering off in the early '00s) humankind underwent a massive technological transformation.
Sadly, the technological transformation has not resulted in any great political, social or economic transformation for the better. It was a nice idea, but all it's really done is opened up a new way for large corporations to advertise and/or make money.
So how about some screenshots of how the site looked back in the day? .
Cleaner, but without rounded corners on text boxes.
Now we have to actually have an inteligent argument to make our case.
Priceless.
Believing that making money is the most important thing in the world, and Trumps [*] any other moral consideration IS an ideology, it's just that as a conservative/right wing loon you can't see it.
[*] pun intended
It's like being at a party with a few musicians and guitars being passed around - alive, something that hangs on the air and has breath... a feeling of "something special is happening here"
Let me guess, you're an editor on BoingBoing?
If anything, the more level-headed users have left for reddit
Reddit's like 4chan without the pr0n.
However, the long term consequences of the decision wouldn’t be clear for years.
Consequences like the MTV "Jersey Shore" banner ad on this article.
If you choose to view ads, it's a bit futile then complaining about them. All advertising is shit, the only question is whether you will put up with x amount of annoyance in return for viewing stuff for nothing (if they are somehow unblockable).
Hacker News [ycombinator.com] has "News for Startups". Many /. articles show up there first. The community has, generally, far fewer commentators and much less humor.
"Slashdot without the humour." Yeah, that'll work well.
Most people start falling apart when they hit 40
No they don't. Judging by my parents' generation I'd say more like 70 - 75 as long as they were medically fairly average (but still smoked, drank too much, etc,) Their parents started declining at about 60 -65. I'm expecting to be relatively fit and mobile at 80.
This is forced and not funny. Yet someone modded it up.
Nostalgia for the old days.
There has only ever been one funny "Soviet reversal" joke, which was Smirnoff's original.
What about backflow: people who see all these niche communities, and decide to get involved with one, not out of interest in the topic, but because they need a group?
It's kind of like street gangs. At first they existed to provide protection to members, but then they became a trend in their own right, like those shirts with the little alligators on them. Does backflow affect the quality of discussion?
That's me! I only come to slashdot for the vicious rumbles and the hurried drunken sex afterwards.
The bad thing about this is now you have these groups that are big enough to permeate into mainstream society and garner enough political power to contribute to government policy (i.e. Scientology, Tea Partiers, Creationists, etc.) and de-evolve society into their way of thinking.
Yeah gee... if only everyone thought as you did. I know, FORCE everyone to think exactly like you do, and we'll have a perfect society. Because obviously no one has evolved to your higher plane of existence. It may get messy on the "forcing" part, but you can't make a great omelet without breaking eggs.
I'd go on a refresher course for Basic English Comprehension if I were you before posting any comments on an English language forum. You're just embarrassing yourself by your total failure to understand what you appear to be replying to.
GP said absolutely nothing about forcing people to think in any way; rather he was lamenting the disproportionate power to affect other people's thoughts and lives that we see nowadays in such fringe groups as he mentioned.
PS are you a creationist or tea bagger to get so worked up about this? I can't believe a scientologist would even be allowed to read slashdot.
What is good is that I can read about sexual fanfiction stories for the show Castle and its cast, which I thoroughly enjoy.
Pervert. Everyone knows that only sexual fanfiction stories for the show CSI and its cast is any good.
Religion is inherited
No, it really is not.
We're either going to have to enforce "truth" (which leads to an authoritarian, totalitarian, fascist or total state) or have a pluralistic definition of truth.
Truth isn't pluralistic, opinion and interpretation are. It is objectively true whereabouts Barack Obama was born. If you want to believe he is a secret Muslim and al Qaeda operative, no one can force you not to.
What is wrong is when most people just listen to one side of the story all the time and start confusing the two.
Yes, but if everyone had had your attitude three hundred years ago we'd all still be living in monarchies, being told what to think by priests and justifying child labour, slavery, the lack of votes for women and non-landowners and so on.
I don't care what anyone says, there has been progress over that period. We have this wonderful thing called the internet now which should allow universal education and empowerment, it is not the time to start being pessimistic about the future.
Why Ron Paul and his supporters ally with the Republicans, I may never truly know or understand. But it most definitely keeps me from voting for them.
When libertarians describe themselves as "fiscally conservative, socially liberal" or whatever, they seem unable to comprehend that this is just another way of saying "I support the existing military-industrial complex and capitalist system, and would like to pay less tax so that I can buy more drugs".
Actually, you'll find that the majority believes evolution is contradicted by scientific evidence(in the United States).
That doesn't make any sense. Evolution is based on scientific evidence. It's the people who don't have scientific evidence, but do have faith and the word of God to back them up, who generally don't believe that evolution is correct.
i believe that if i vote for a candidate whom i know will almost certainly commit immoral acts then i'm complicit in those acts and no amount of other good stuff makes me a good guy in that situation, so neither candidate could get my vote.
I absolutely agree, but the moral option is not to say "the two main parties are as bad as each other so I won't vote" it is to vote for another party. And if/when they lose to start helping them build up so they will do better next time.
I do believe there are political opinions that outright contra-factual, including quite a few associated with my party of choice.
That's why I don't have a "party of choice".
That's just another way of saying you're conservative.
Assuming you've rented anything like housing
You don't generally pay for your mom's basement until you're eighteen, so most slashdotters will have lost you there.