No one likes subsidizing "Zombie Strippers". But people don't like using library computers either, it's unpleasant and a hassle; which is the opposite of letting people have easy access to information. Also, there are things you can't look up while other people are around, politics, sex-ed, Iranian marches, etc... You can't do your banking, and it's embarrasing to talk to family and close acquaintances while on a big screen that everyone can see. Also, you can't run your own software like Linux updates, Freenet or yes, Gaming. I don't mind subsidizing people's online gaming either, it's not that expensive and people enjoy it a lot.
Having to share an internet kiosk an hour from your house isn't the same thing as having internet access when you want it. It's a pale imitation.
because paying people to occupied remote territory is cheaper than setting up a military patrol
That too, especially if they're farming or something. The issue isn't completely academic either, I remember friends discussing problems our government has had with actual bandits in the more remote areas. Simply because there was too much empty space to keep track of them until the army could arrive. I also remember them saying the army dealt with that problem.
Well I'd say that it depends on the degree of remoteness. I live in Australia, and most of it is pretty empty. People live pretty close to the center anyway and not necessarily in towns or villages. I mean by themselves. The government makes an effort to help them anyway.
If you've bought a house halfway up a mountain, it would probably cost several million to run a line up to your place. But compared to the cost of debating the issue endlessly in court and the news, satellite internet is cheaper.
I think it IS possible to get 100%. Go with a plan that helps 99.9% and then have a location-independent plan, something like a portable satellite modem, subsidized by the state, for the remainder. Some people do live in exceptionally remote areas; if the state has problems supplying you with electricity, internet will also prove to be problematic.
True, the prices are unreasonable. However, for new release movies, the companies take something like 90% income for the opening week and leave the remaining 10% for the theaters. So... the money comes from the refreshments.
I'm not excusing the massive prices, but I would point out that even if people stopped buying snacks, the prices won't go down.
If we hold true that Netflix will continue to purchase the same number of DVDs, jsut 28 das later (As the GP said), than if someone who was going to "be good customers and rent the movie" from Netflix chooses to download and watch it, WB has not lost any sales or profit.
It is only going ot be a loss for WB if Netflix chooses to purchase less DVDs. And even then, it's only a loss of the number of DVD sales does not go up enough to cover the decline in Netflix purchases.
What we're saying is that sales probably won't rise.
Movies have their absolute highest value in the days they come out; and the people who have netflix memberships get these because buying movies is expensive and not worth it. Once the customer has looked at the site, seen that it's not there, and possibly made the step to download it online; however many DVDs netflix gets later is inconsequential; after all, you've already seen the movie. People would get them for family gatherings, but not to watch on their own or with their immediate families.
Admittedly this is just my impression. But I can't see someone going, "This movie is so awesome, I'm going to track down a store so I can pay an extra $30~ (haven't priced a new-release dvd lately) on top of my netflix membership so I can see it early.", what I see regular people saying is "F*&^ it."
He told Bauder to listen to the phone. "'When you hear the tone, I want you to hit the space bar on the keyboard.'" Bauder, in other words, would be secretly communicating with Montgomery while the military guys watched the supposed software demo on another computer.
...and at the time, he seriously didn't find it the least bit suspicious? This stretches credibility, either they're all huge idiots, or they were playing along while the going was good.
It's not about US-consumed oil.
It's about US (and British!) companies getting the oil to enrich themselves, their boards, and associated politicos (Cheney, et al).
Except no western companies got any of the oil contracts from Iraq, not even BHP.
I'm no fan of Stephen Conroy's Great Wall of Australia, but the owners of the site in question can't have any claim to legitimacy if they fraudulently use someone else's name to register it.
That's a legitimate reason to take their domain away, not censor it. The main reason people complained about the great firewall is the fear that it might be used to silence speech the government dissaproves of. How is this not a direct example of just such a thing?
You mean like the three randomized controlled trials in Africa with multiple thousands of men that all were stopped early because they showed such a dramatic benefit to the circumcised group? Meaning, 50% the infection rate of the control group? See, e.g., here. The results might not be as drastic outside of Africa, due to different transmission vectors for HIV, but circumcision is definitely an effective measure to cut HIV in some important cases.
I have no doubt there's an effect. It's still less efficient than condom use, and condoms don't require cutting anything off.
Parents already make far more momentous decisions for their kids, which can be equally irreversible. They can leave the kid watching TV all day so they get bored by real life, feed them only junk food so they get diabetes, and send them to a terrible school where they don't get an education and end up stuck with a menial and low-paying job for the rest of their life. But circumcising them is somehow a crime against humanity.
Crime against humanity, wow, they're certainly full of hot air, you'd better track them down and have a chat about perspective with them. Back to our previous discussion; all bad parenting sucks. Bad parenting like having irreversible surgery performed on your children because it's too much hassle to teach them about safe-sex.
The rest of your quote may or may not have a point, but this part doesn't. The reason parents choose things for their children is exactly BECAUSE it is helpful. We are trying to make choices for them and teach them things as they grow. If we waited until our children were old enough to choose everything for themselves, we'd make no choices at all.
irreversible surgery != everything
Given a choice, they won't "stick to your time line", they'll tell you to shove it. Not in those exact words. Since this is something that many parents DO put off to let their children choose, it's not like this is a response people don't reasonably suspect already.
My advice is not to depend on "lowered risk" and teach condom use, which carries a risk of transmission of less than 1% per year among couples who have one parter HIV positive. That's much safer.
My observation as a female is that men prefer "hot dumb blond chicks" (in bars etc) over more regular gals per se, without intellegence being factored in at all. Dumb, smart, pfft, she's hot.
As a warmish rather than hot chick, I think, in general, that the smarter the man the more he values intelligence. Or that's what I keep telling myself, anyway.
Admittedly I lack experience in this matter, but most people I know who go to bars to pick up members of the opposite sex go there with the intention of finding someone to bang for one night, after which they will (hopefully) never see that person again. It's not that guys don't want girls with intelligence, I and all the guys I know rate intelligence highly in a woman. It's that guys don't generally go to bars to find people with which to form relationships.
If you're only hooking up for sex, the only thing that really matters is how they look.
Indeed, that's my reaction. While an infant doesn't have the ability to store the memories of the pain or loss in a way that can be recalled later.
That's not exactly a stirring argument. It boils down to "Let's do it now because we can get away with it.".
As for HIV...have you tried sex with a condom? It doesn't feel that good. Bareback is immensely better.
You do know that people who have the procedure done in their adulthood report massive loss of sensation right? Cutting off the patch of skin with the largest group of sensory clusters on that part of the body isn't completely without effect. That being said, you'd be an idiot to go bareback with a HIV positive partner even if they were on the pill, which means you'd be using a condom anyway. Lower risk of transmission isn't the same thing as "no risk".
It may be mutilation...but it provides strong protection against HIV, a rather deadly disease.
So do condoms. Also, the one study that showed anti-HIV effects was found to have used cherry picked population samples.
What's always bothered me is that people insist on doing it to children. If it's so helpful, then parents would naturally wait until the child is old enough to choose for himself. I've always suspected that the reason it's done to children is that it's a part of culture, and that parents know that when the child gets old enough to choose for himself, their reaction will be "Oh, HELL no.".
Your brains are already hacked on daily base. The exploit is called advertising. The best part is, you don't even know your needs are implanted.
Have a nice holiday.
Considering that you've duped a comment (the only comment) made to my other post; I'd say that you're the one with the meme infestation.
Explain to me how potentially "writing directly to your brain" is functionally any different than manipulation through the control of information?
They can make you dream their products in your sleep like in "Transmetropolitan", as well as generally being a massive nuisance ten thousand times worse than any advertising today. That's the tame example. Your examples aren't being controlled exclusively, they're being manipulated; but they can choose to break their manipulation in a short period of time by alternating their sources. Advertisers can cajole, beg, plead, but they can't make you; because they don't control your mind.
Alternatively, remember all those stories about spouses hacking into their significant other's machine to poke around or just for petty revenge. Any device that can change your mental state can probably mess you up if someone alters the internal logic. It would be similar to having a networked pacemaker. If you're a fan of sci-fi, you'll recognize "Down and out in the magic kingdom". Or better yet, the novel "Feed"; a protester releases a tame worm that temporarily incapacitates it's targets, to teach them the folly of technology. A minor coding error in the application means that on certain low end implants, it kills people. As I said, networked pacemaker.
I base my paranoia on the haphazard way security is implemented today. If anyone keeps up with The Daily WTF, they'll know that many companies don't even implement basic security principles; much less prepare for theoretical and unproven attacks. The recent article on the sidewinder? missile accident shows that even military technology isn't 100% bug proof. You could argue that the devices will be totally safe, because the programmers will be sure to take additional care with them, since human lives are at stake... I would pose... on what experience would you say that?
Of course, even if we did have mentally altering implants, most people will be totally fine. It's just the minority that will experience significant problems. Much like driving. My preference for having inputs go through skin channels or a HUD is my version of seat belts.
Considering that Microsoft is a company that does it's damndest to avoid any form of taxation, and has even threatened economic repercussions against the American government to get it's way in the past, I'd genuinely he hurt if I found out that the NSA's giving out free technical help to these people.
If it was for some nefarious purpose, well then, they're just doing their jobs.
The NSA did SELinux (for Linux...) so I don't think it's unreasonable to think they might have helped MS on security issues without doing anything nasty.
True; there's no guarantee that something nasty happened, of course there's no guarantee that something nasty didn't happen.
Still, if they did put a backdoor in Windows, then all I can say is "good for them". I mean I LOVE Windows, I use it on all my machines. However if you're a government agency or someone else who's genuinely concerned with security, and you're running unknown code on your system, then your being reckless. The prudent thought is to assume that there is already a backdoor of some kind and filter all communications to and from their machines to stop unknown packets getting through. Or better yet, run only known code. This isn't a call for OSS software on all computers, but rather that these institutions would insist on seeing the code before entrusting themselves to it.
I remember when the news came out that Britain's new submarines would run embedded Windows on some of their systems. That just chilled me to the bone, more paranoia, not less, would be good when considering the design of secure systems. So, don't trust anything you can't verify.
Also: Before anyone chimes in helpfully, I'm well aware that the GPL only requires you to provide code to people who buy your product; so it's almost exactly like OSS.
Yeah, that's why I'd never trust anything that could potentially write directly to my brain. Some sort of helmet thing might be uncomfortable, but at least you can rip it off if they (trojans / hackers / foreign agents) start getting frisky with your mind. Presuming that you have enough motor control left to do the ripping. Perhaps a panic button; hooked up to bladder control or something. (only partly joking)
Controlling machines with thought is brilliant though, and I'm all for it. Presuming that the thing doing the controlling does feedback through skin responses or a HUD on an external display.
You can get rain in large enclosed spaces. it's condesate. You might not want that raining on you. everything from evaporated dog urine, to aerosol diesel exahust, to flu viruses coming back down. Of course that happens now, but it's dillluted and also purified by the UV.
True, true. But the dome is curved right? If condensation happens, won't the droplets flow down the sides instead of falling straight down? I'm assuming the dome won't be so big that there will be a huge cold spot in the top for the droplets to reform in mid air, since one of the main points is for the dome to trap heat. Otherwise this is another engineering problem for the planners to think on. I think the main reason something like this should be done is because it hasn't been tried before, it will give us valuable information about future living possibilities.
Of course I say this as a disinterested third party. It's not us who take the risk that it will backfire.
1. Piracetam requires a prescription in my country. 2. It irriates me that I need to get Aspirin over the counter.
I never said anything about Aspirin requiring a prescription or piracetam being able to be bought over the counter without one. I can't believe you posted so many times, but failed to pick up on that.
Maybe it would also help to point out that it has nothing to do with where the medicine is stocked; it refers to how the transaction is made.
To make sense of it, look at the broader uses of the phrase "over the counter".
Direct interaction between two parties without an intermediary.
Through direct trade.
Over-the-counter (OTC) trading is to trade financial instruments such as stocks, bonds, commodities or derivatives directly between two parties.
Thus purchasing drugs "over the counter" is a simple transaction between you and the drugstore, without requiring the approval of a doctor. If a prescription is required, it is no longer a simple transaction between the two of you... you have to get the doctor, a third party, to approve of the transaction.
Slashdot Mirror
No one likes subsidizing "Zombie Strippers". But people don't like using library computers either, it's unpleasant and a hassle; which is the opposite of letting people have easy access to information. Also, there are things you can't look up while other people are around, politics, sex-ed, Iranian marches, etc... You can't do your banking, and it's embarrasing to talk to family and close acquaintances while on a big screen that everyone can see. Also, you can't run your own software like Linux updates, Freenet or yes, Gaming. I don't mind subsidizing people's online gaming either, it's not that expensive and people enjoy it a lot.
Having to share an internet kiosk an hour from your house isn't the same thing as having internet access when you want it. It's a pale imitation.
because paying people to occupied remote territory is cheaper than setting up a military patrol
That too, especially if they're farming or something. The issue isn't completely academic either, I remember friends discussing problems our government has had with actual bandits in the more remote areas. Simply because there was too much empty space to keep track of them until the army could arrive. I also remember them saying the army dealt with that problem.
Well I'd say that it depends on the degree of remoteness. I live in Australia, and most of it is pretty empty. People live pretty close to the center anyway and not necessarily in towns or villages. I mean by themselves. The government makes an effort to help them anyway.
If you've bought a house halfway up a mountain, it would probably cost several million to run a line up to your place. But compared to the cost of debating the issue endlessly in court and the news, satellite internet is cheaper.
It's funny because it's true.
I think it IS possible to get 100%. Go with a plan that helps 99.9% and then have a location-independent plan, something like a portable satellite modem, subsidized by the state, for the remainder. Some people do live in exceptionally remote areas; if the state has problems supplying you with electricity, internet will also prove to be problematic.
True, the prices are unreasonable. However, for new release movies, the companies take something like 90% income for the opening week and leave the remaining 10% for the theaters. So... the money comes from the refreshments.
I'm not excusing the massive prices, but I would point out that even if people stopped buying snacks, the prices won't go down.
If we hold true that Netflix will continue to purchase the same number of DVDs, jsut 28 das later (As the GP said), than if someone who was going to "be good customers and rent the movie" from Netflix chooses to download and watch it, WB has not lost any sales or profit. It is only going ot be a loss for WB if Netflix chooses to purchase less DVDs. And even then, it's only a loss of the number of DVD sales does not go up enough to cover the decline in Netflix purchases.
What we're saying is that sales probably won't rise.
Movies have their absolute highest value in the days they come out; and the people who have netflix memberships get these because buying movies is expensive and not worth it. Once the customer has looked at the site, seen that it's not there, and possibly made the step to download it online; however many DVDs netflix gets later is inconsequential; after all, you've already seen the movie. People would get them for family gatherings, but not to watch on their own or with their immediate families.
Admittedly this is just my impression. But I can't see someone going, "This movie is so awesome, I'm going to track down a store so I can pay an extra $30~ (haven't priced a new-release dvd lately) on top of my netflix membership so I can see it early.", what I see regular people saying is "F*&^ it."
Who was it that said "The first rule of business is never make it harder for people to give you their money."?
He told Bauder to listen to the phone. "'When you hear the tone, I want you to hit the space bar on the keyboard.'" Bauder, in other words, would be secretly communicating with Montgomery while the military guys watched the supposed software demo on another computer.
...and at the time, he seriously didn't find it the least bit suspicious? This stretches credibility, either they're all huge idiots, or they were playing along while the going was good.
It's not about US-consumed oil. It's about US (and British!) companies getting the oil to enrich themselves, their boards, and associated politicos (Cheney, et al).
Except no western companies got any of the oil contracts from Iraq, not even BHP.
I'm no fan of Stephen Conroy's Great Wall of Australia, but the owners of the site in question can't have any claim to legitimacy if they fraudulently use someone else's name to register it.
That's a legitimate reason to take their domain away, not censor it. The main reason people complained about the great firewall is the fear that it might be used to silence speech the government dissaproves of. How is this not a direct example of just such a thing?
You mean like the three randomized controlled trials in Africa with multiple thousands of men that all were stopped early because they showed such a dramatic benefit to the circumcised group? Meaning, 50% the infection rate of the control group? See, e.g., here. The results might not be as drastic outside of Africa, due to different transmission vectors for HIV, but circumcision is definitely an effective measure to cut HIV in some important cases.
I have no doubt there's an effect. It's still less efficient than condom use, and condoms don't require cutting anything off.
Parents already make far more momentous decisions for their kids, which can be equally irreversible. They can leave the kid watching TV all day so they get bored by real life, feed them only junk food so they get diabetes, and send them to a terrible school where they don't get an education and end up stuck with a menial and low-paying job for the rest of their life. But circumcising them is somehow a crime against humanity.
Crime against humanity, wow, they're certainly full of hot air, you'd better track them down and have a chat about perspective with them. Back to our previous discussion; all bad parenting sucks. Bad parenting like having irreversible surgery performed on your children because it's too much hassle to teach them about safe-sex.
The rest of your quote may or may not have a point, but this part doesn't. The reason parents choose things for their children is exactly BECAUSE it is helpful. We are trying to make choices for them and teach them things as they grow. If we waited until our children were old enough to choose everything for themselves, we'd make no choices at all.
irreversible surgery != everything
Given a choice, they won't "stick to your time line", they'll tell you to shove it. Not in those exact words. Since this is something that many parents DO put off to let their children choose, it's not like this is a response people don't reasonably suspect already.
My advice is not to depend on "lowered risk" and teach condom use, which carries a risk of transmission of less than 1% per year among couples who have one parter HIV positive. That's much safer.
My observation as a female is that men prefer "hot dumb blond chicks" (in bars etc) over more regular gals per se, without intellegence being factored in at all. Dumb, smart, pfft, she's hot. As a warmish rather than hot chick, I think, in general, that the smarter the man the more he values intelligence. Or that's what I keep telling myself, anyway.
Admittedly I lack experience in this matter, but most people I know who go to bars to pick up members of the opposite sex go there with the intention of finding someone to bang for one night, after which they will (hopefully) never see that person again. It's not that guys don't want girls with intelligence, I and all the guys I know rate intelligence highly in a woman. It's that guys don't generally go to bars to find people with which to form relationships.
If you're only hooking up for sex, the only thing that really matters is how they look.
Indeed, that's my reaction. While an infant doesn't have the ability to store the memories of the pain or loss in a way that can be recalled later.
That's not exactly a stirring argument. It boils down to "Let's do it now because we can get away with it.".
As for HIV...have you tried sex with a condom? It doesn't feel that good. Bareback is immensely better.
You do know that people who have the procedure done in their adulthood report massive loss of sensation right? Cutting off the patch of skin with the largest group of sensory clusters on that part of the body isn't completely without effect. That being said, you'd be an idiot to go bareback with a HIV positive partner even if they were on the pill, which means you'd be using a condom anyway. Lower risk of transmission isn't the same thing as "no risk".
It may be mutilation...but it provides strong protection against HIV, a rather deadly disease.
So do condoms. Also, the one study that showed anti-HIV effects was found to have used cherry picked population samples.
What's always bothered me is that people insist on doing it to children. If it's so helpful, then parents would naturally wait until the child is old enough to choose for himself. I've always suspected that the reason it's done to children is that it's a part of culture, and that parents know that when the child gets old enough to choose for himself, their reaction will be "Oh, HELL no.".
Your brains are already hacked on daily base. The exploit is called advertising. The best part is, you don't even know your needs are implanted. Have a nice holiday.
Considering that you've duped a comment (the only comment) made to my other post; I'd say that you're the one with the meme infestation.
;)
Except the other guy did it better.
Have a nice holiday
Explain to me how potentially "writing directly to your brain" is functionally any different than manipulation through the control of information?
They can make you dream their products in your sleep like in "Transmetropolitan", as well as generally being a massive nuisance ten thousand times worse than any advertising today. That's the tame example. Your examples aren't being controlled exclusively, they're being manipulated; but they can choose to break their manipulation in a short period of time by alternating their sources. Advertisers can cajole, beg, plead, but they can't make you; because they don't control your mind.
Alternatively, remember all those stories about spouses hacking into their significant other's machine to poke around or just for petty revenge. Any device that can change your mental state can probably mess you up if someone alters the internal logic. It would be similar to having a networked pacemaker. If you're a fan of sci-fi, you'll recognize "Down and out in the magic kingdom". Or better yet, the novel "Feed"; a protester releases a tame worm that temporarily incapacitates it's targets, to teach them the folly of technology. A minor coding error in the application means that on certain low end implants, it kills people. As I said, networked pacemaker.
I base my paranoia on the haphazard way security is implemented today. If anyone keeps up with The Daily WTF, they'll know that many companies don't even implement basic security principles; much less prepare for theoretical and unproven attacks. The recent article on the sidewinder? missile accident shows that even military technology isn't 100% bug proof. You could argue that the devices will be totally safe, because the programmers will be sure to take additional care with them, since human lives are at stake... I would pose... on what experience would you say that?
Of course, even if we did have mentally altering implants, most people will be totally fine. It's just the minority that will experience significant problems. Much like driving. My preference for having inputs go through skin channels or a HUD is my version of seat belts.
Considering that Microsoft is a company that does it's damndest to avoid any form of taxation, and has even threatened economic repercussions against the American government to get it's way in the past, I'd genuinely he hurt if I found out that the NSA's giving out free technical help to these people.
If it was for some nefarious purpose, well then, they're just doing their jobs.
The NSA did SELinux (for Linux...) so I don't think it's unreasonable to think they might have helped MS on security issues without doing anything nasty.
True; there's no guarantee that something nasty happened, of course there's no guarantee that something nasty didn't happen.
Still, if they did put a backdoor in Windows, then all I can say is "good for them". I mean I LOVE Windows, I use it on all my machines. However if you're a government agency or someone else who's genuinely concerned with security, and you're running unknown code on your system, then your being reckless. The prudent thought is to assume that there is already a backdoor of some kind and filter all communications to and from their machines to stop unknown packets getting through. Or better yet, run only known code. This isn't a call for OSS software on all computers, but rather that these institutions would insist on seeing the code before entrusting themselves to it.
I remember when the news came out that Britain's new submarines would run embedded Windows on some of their systems. That just chilled me to the bone, more paranoia, not less, would be good when considering the design of secure systems. So, don't trust anything you can't verify.
Also: Before anyone chimes in helpfully, I'm well aware that the GPL only requires you to provide code to people who buy your product; so it's almost exactly like OSS.
Computer implants will control brains by 2019.
Yeah, that's why I'd never trust anything that could potentially write directly to my brain. Some sort of helmet thing might be uncomfortable, but at least you can rip it off if they (trojans / hackers / foreign agents) start getting frisky with your mind. Presuming that you have enough motor control left to do the ripping. Perhaps a panic button; hooked up to bladder control or something. (only partly joking)
Controlling machines with thought is brilliant though, and I'm all for it. Presuming that the thing doing the controlling does feedback through skin responses or a HUD on an external display.
You could probably survive China, Moldova or Vietnam. For that matter the United Arab Emirates would be wonderful if you could afford it.
You can get rain in large enclosed spaces. it's condesate. You might not want that raining on you. everything from evaporated dog urine, to aerosol diesel exahust, to flu viruses coming back down. Of course that happens now, but it's dillluted and also purified by the UV.
True, true. But the dome is curved right? If condensation happens, won't the droplets flow down the sides instead of falling straight down? I'm assuming the dome won't be so big that there will be a huge cold spot in the top for the droplets to reform in mid air, since one of the main points is for the dome to trap heat. Otherwise this is another engineering problem for the planners to think on. I think the main reason something like this should be done is because it hasn't been tried before, it will give us valuable information about future living possibilities.
Of course I say this as a disinterested third party. It's not us who take the risk that it will backfire.
No rain though, that's a plus if you live in the city and don't have a lawn. I'm sure you can have birds and insects inside the dome.
I made two points
1. Piracetam requires a prescription in my country.
2. It irriates me that I need to get Aspirin over the counter.
I never said anything about Aspirin requiring a prescription or piracetam being able to be bought over the counter without one. I can't believe you posted so many times, but failed to pick up on that.
Maybe it would also help to point out that it has nothing to do with where the medicine is stocked; it refers to how the transaction is made. To make sense of it, look at the broader uses of the phrase "over the counter". Direct interaction between two parties without an intermediary. Through direct trade. Over-the-counter (OTC) trading is to trade financial instruments such as stocks, bonds, commodities or derivatives directly between two parties. Thus purchasing drugs "over the counter" is a simple transaction between you and the drugstore, without requiring the approval of a doctor. If a prescription is required, it is no longer a simple transaction between the two of you... you have to get the doctor, a third party, to approve of the transaction.
Ok, why are you telling me this?