[Seems OT, but it honestly isn't]The last Star Wars prequel is one of the most inspiring things I've seen out of Hollywood in a long, long time. It gave me hope. The dialog is mostly sub-par (as usual), but the plot and morals are dead-on relevant to modern America. I don't think that we're past the point of no return yet; not when a mainstream movie like this can get away with such blatant satire of democracy and patriotism.
"We shall change into the first Galactic Empire for a safe and secure society." "So this is how freedom dies - to thunderous applause."
""You're either with me or against me." "Only a Sith deals in such absolutes."
(Anyone with functioning brain should realize that Lucas is saying that Bush is no better than a Sith.)
It's not that these sentiments are new or radical; it's that they're present in one of the best-hyped mass market franchises of all time. Joe Sixpack will watch this movie! With his kids! Hell, I almost wish that this movie was rated PG, so that more kids will see it. Sitheven puts it in the context of Judeo-Christian style morality, which should make it even easier for the unwashed masses to digest.
I don't think it's too late for us. We who actually recognize and remember the true spirit of America (distrust of and freedom from our government) would do well to recomend this movie to our more trusting, sheep-like friends. It's like 1984, but with enough explosions to keep the audience interested.
I still wish we could've seen Jar-Jar's bloody head was splattered against the camera, and I really wish Lucas would get someone else to do his dialog (Vader: "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" *sounds of audience retching*), but if you can look past these flaws, it really is an awesome, insightful, RELEVANT movie.
Doesn't surprise me. My implication was not that we didn't have any rainforests, but that the vast majority of rainforests lie outside the USA. You describe two of the rainforests we do have as "swatch" and "patch", I doubt that the flora in Southeastern Alaska is anything like what you'd find in an Amazonian rainforest. Great-grandparent was trying to imply that the USA's environmental policy had a significant impact on rainforest destruction, and I think that's absurd at face value.
Disregarding your BS about Kyoto (just how many rainforests do you think there are in the USA, anyway?), I'm pretty sure that the rainforests, which cover a tiny percentage of the earth's surface, are not a "primary" source of oxygen. In fact, I had always heard that algae produced far more oxygen than larger plants, although I can't find a link to back me up.
Did I say we should ban profit, or anything else for that matter?
Your powers of comprehension are stupid. I was merely demonstrating how an analogy was false and why corporate GPL violation is generally more severe than personal copyright violation.
"When we grow up and get our jobs, that's our life right there. They can access anything about us. It just screws us up for the rest of our lives," said Julianne Junus, local fucktard.
Profit isn't evil, but profit encourages evil. I don't have any incentive to put the MPAA out of business, but many commericial software developers do have the incentive to put GPL'ed software out of business. Things people do for fun in their spare time should not be confused for things that put food on peoples' tables (or put a few more zeros on their bank account balance.) Neither one is inherently immoral, but the latter has a much greater potential for abuse.
I don't want to come off sounding like your typical anti-corporate zealot, but there's a big big BIG difference between a 12 year old girl violating copyright law and a multimillion dollar company violating copyright law.
Consumers are NOT an organized whole. They are not out to destroy anything. As long as the TV/Music industry chooses to evolve, they will never be put out of business. OTOH, if a company like Microsoft could violate the GPL, they could virtually destroy Linux for all but the most dedicated enthusiast (use their war chest to build a ton of awesome improvements, convert all of the commercial users and a significant portion of the home users, then slowly break compatibility.)
Your analogy fails because commercial enterprise is not the same as personal use. Downloading a TV show might not be "right", but it's not in the same league as major GPL violation. One is for profit; the other is not. Corporations do not (or rather should not) have the same rights that individuals do, and you just can't compare the calculated tactics of a software giant with a bunch of preteen p2p users who just wanna catch last night's Inuyasha.
Simply saying "wow, this is scary" isn't questioning anything; it's fear-mongering. I don't doubt that there are some very serious psycho-sociological issues with growing a human brain in a sheep's body, but IMO there is absolutely NOTHING scary or immoral about hearts, livers, etc.
Even the sentient-sheep proposition might not be automatically bad (anyone got a good New Zealand joke to go here?)--as long as they aren't suffering, as long as it's even POSSIBLE for a human consciousness to be happy or content in the body of a sheep, I don't see anything inherently immoral about it.
The point of this is that ANYONE can use it with cheap, off-the-shelf computer equipment. The NSA can spend millions on special hardware to keep their deathray plans a secret, but this is a VERY secure solution that can be had using a couple hundred dollars' worth of equipment, and the resulting disk can be securely read on ANY computer (that supports boot from CD.) You can even include anti-TEMPEST fonts, if the computer you're on isn't van Eck-proofed.
It would be ideal for mild-moderately sensative government data, and for safeguarding industrial secrets; no special hardware required.
Holy crap... this is a GREAT idea. Not just for porn, but for any read-only file that needs to be securly archived. Programs like TrueCrypt (OSS, btw--check it out) can provide an insane level of security (and even plausible deniability), but that all falls apart at the OS level, where all kinds of remnant temp files and recent document lists and spyware can reveal you every time you view said files.
But a self-encrypted CD and read-only OS really is (almost) foolproof. The only thing you'd need to worry about after this is van Eck radiation, hardware keyloggers, and, of course, the strength of your encryption algorithm/passphrase.
Then fucking keep it on DST and stop going back. There, problem fucking solved and no one loses any sleep over it.
(If you don't want your kids to wait at their busstop in the dark, then change the time they have to go to school.)
BTW, this is not just a matter of "discomfort." Studies have shown that there are more traffic-related fatalities in the days after we "spring forward."
Can't we just admit we don't have a freakin' clue and move along?
Move along to what? Above all else, science is supposed to try to explain these mysteries. To give up because we don't have a (seemingly) elegant or simple explanation is, well, the anthesis of the scientific method. You've got to come up with a theory. Maybe it sounds good, and maybe it doesn't--the only real question is, does it explain the phenomenon being observed?
If I knew Einstein back in 1905, I would've told him he needed to lay off the crack pipe. "Matter bending space? Relative velocity creating differing timeframes? Dude, what a fantasy, what a KLUDGE! You can't just go ripping apart some of the basic assumptions of science just because you want Maxwell's and Newton's ideas to play nicely together."
...but he was right. He took a stab in the dark, figured out an explanation that worked (even though it sounded insane from a "common sense" point of view), and the evidence proved him right. Time and space are relative--we know this for a fact now, because other scientists set out to prove (or disprove) Einstein's crazy ideas. We're not so sure about Dark Energy/inflation ripples/mystical tomatoes, and hell, we might never know for sure, but it's obvious that SOMETHING is going on here, and I for one am glad that the scientists of today are coming up with these all of these cheesy, crazy explanations.
I didn't say it didn't have its uses. I said, it would be too much of a hassle (...for Jane and Joe Sixpack.)
Even if you do store the passphrase locally (or better yet, just random key material), you still need a single, centralized authority that matches your email address up with a public key. Otherwise, Jane and Joe Sixpack will have to deal with keyrings... again, too much trouble just to share the latest pictures of junior.
I think that if the email world could actually agree on such a centralized authority, the spam problem would've been taken care of a long time ago.
Like I said, "it helps protect those of us who already take it seriously (it's a needle in a haystack sort of thing)"
For this and the other reasons you stated, I fully support the idea of wanton encryption, but in practice "Jane and Joe Sixpack" (the great-grandparent's comment, which I was replying to) don't give a crap. Even if it's turned on in Outlook by default, they'll get tech support (or their kids) to turn it off because passwords and keyrings are too much trouble for them. Yes, I suppose you could remove the password and use a local keyfile, then have some kind of centralized server that Outlook asked whenever it needed a public key, but let's be realistic here... M$ isn't going to spend a lot of money--and severely piss off the NSA--just to include a feature that the vast majority of their customers will not care about.
On the other hand, the Linux camp might create such a system... but only once Linux becomes more popular with Jane and Joe Sixpack.
What does Jane and Joe sixpack need with PGP encryption?
I mean yeah, I'd like to see other people take privacy more seriously--if nothing else, it helps protect those of us who already take it seriously (it's a needle in a haystack sort of thing)--but people would rather read their mail instantly than have to bother remembering yet another password.
So you're saying that George W. Bush is the only truly free-willed American left?
Re:how about "creationism" crap?
on
Bad Science Awards
·
· Score: 2, Informative
It's the best explanation we have. Creationism isn't really an explanation at all--it merely dodges the question how did we come to be? God did it. Um, ok, but how? Doesn't matter, because he's God.
Practically all the "facts" I learned in school turned out to be mistaken, or just out and out lies. I spent considerable time memorizing charts of horses evolving from tiny 5 toed animals to large hoofed animals only to find out later that someone just made all that stuff up, the specimens presented where not in chronoligical order and not even from the same continent. If you have to intentionally mislead people then maybe you're supporting a psuedoscience too.
This is a failing of your education; not a failing of the science itself. I was told a number of outright lies too, especially in history, but just because our educational system is so shitty (textbooks in particular) doesn't mean you can write off the entire thing as a pseudoscience.
What possible natural selection process would select a fish with an eye 1/1000 of inch higher than the other? I can see having it all the way would be a great benifit but unless there was a sudden mutation it doesn't seem to make a lot of sense.
You're sort of correct. The evolution-causing mutations are usually bigger than 1/1000 of an inch. A common misconception is that they have to be incredibly miniscule, but that simply isn't the case. Look around you; people eyes are not all set at the same exact spot on their face. The differences are slight, but they are certainly bigger than 1/1000 of an inch.
To a fish trying to evade a predator or capture its prey, it certainly could matter if its eyes are 1/16 of an inch higher. No, it wouldn't be a huge difference, nor would it make a difference in every higheyed fish's life, but in a large population over an extended period of time, statistics will work its magic. Fish with eyes 1/16 will be slightly more likely to thrive (assuming that this trait does indeed help them spot food or avoid predators.) Eventually, the majority of the fish population will have high eyes simply because of competition for resources and statistics. Then one day a fish is born with even higher eyes, and the same exact process happens over again.
So you see, the mutations are small enough to happen by mere chance, yet they are significant enough to have an enormous cumulative impact, provided one allows them millions upon millions of years to happen.
Slashdot Mirror
[Seems OT, but it honestly isn't]The last Star Wars prequel is one of the most inspiring things I've seen out of Hollywood in a long, long time. It gave me hope. The dialog is mostly sub-par (as usual), but the plot and morals are dead-on relevant to modern America. I don't think that we're past the point of no return yet; not when a mainstream movie like this can get away with such blatant satire of democracy and patriotism.
"We shall change into the first Galactic Empire for a safe and secure society."
"So this is how freedom dies - to thunderous applause."
""You're either with me or against me."
"Only a Sith deals in such absolutes."
(Anyone with functioning brain should realize that Lucas is saying that Bush is no better than a Sith.)
It's not that these sentiments are new or radical; it's that they're present in one of the best-hyped mass market franchises of all time. Joe Sixpack will watch this movie! With his kids! Hell, I almost wish that this movie was rated PG, so that more kids will see it. Sitheven puts it in the context of Judeo-Christian style morality, which should make it even easier for the unwashed masses to digest.
I don't think it's too late for us. We who actually recognize and remember the true spirit of America (distrust of and freedom from our government) would do well to recomend this movie to our more trusting, sheep-like friends. It's like 1984, but with enough explosions to keep the audience interested.
I still wish we could've seen Jar-Jar's bloody head was splattered against the camera, and I really wish Lucas would get someone else to do his dialog (Vader: "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" *sounds of audience retching*), but if you can look past these flaws, it really is an awesome, insightful, RELEVANT movie.
Doesn't surprise me. My implication was not that we didn't have any rainforests, but that the vast majority of rainforests lie outside the USA. You describe two of the rainforests we do have as "swatch" and "patch", I doubt that the flora in Southeastern Alaska is anything like what you'd find in an Amazonian rainforest. Great-grandparent was trying to imply that the USA's environmental policy had a significant impact on rainforest destruction, and I think that's absurd at face value.
Disregarding your BS about Kyoto (just how many rainforests do you think there are in the USA, anyway?), I'm pretty sure that the rainforests, which cover a tiny percentage of the earth's surface, are not a "primary" source of oxygen. In fact, I had always heard that algae produced far more oxygen than larger plants, although I can't find a link to back me up.
Did I say we should ban profit, or anything else for that matter?
Your powers of comprehension are stupid. I was merely demonstrating how an analogy was false and why corporate GPL violation is generally more severe than personal copyright violation.
The correct quote is:
"When we grow up and get our jobs, that's our life right there. They can access anything about us. It just screws us up for the rest of our lives," said Julianne Junus, local fucktard.
Profit isn't evil, but profit encourages evil. I don't have any incentive to put the MPAA out of business, but many commericial software developers do have the incentive to put GPL'ed software out of business. Things people do for fun in their spare time should not be confused for things that put food on peoples' tables (or put a few more zeros on their bank account balance.) Neither one is inherently immoral, but the latter has a much greater potential for abuse.
I don't want to come off sounding like your typical anti-corporate zealot, but there's a big big BIG difference between a 12 year old girl violating copyright law and a multimillion dollar company violating copyright law.
Consumers are NOT an organized whole. They are not out to destroy anything. As long as the TV/Music industry chooses to evolve, they will never be put out of business. OTOH, if a company like Microsoft could violate the GPL, they could virtually destroy Linux for all but the most dedicated enthusiast (use their war chest to build a ton of awesome improvements, convert all of the commercial users and a significant portion of the home users, then slowly break compatibility.)
Your analogy fails because commercial enterprise is not the same as personal use. Downloading a TV show might not be "right", but it's not in the same league as major GPL violation. One is for profit; the other is not. Corporations do not (or rather should not) have the same rights that individuals do, and you just can't compare the calculated tactics of a software giant with a bunch of preteen p2p users who just wanna catch last night's Inuyasha.
Simply saying "wow, this is scary" isn't questioning anything; it's fear-mongering. I don't doubt that there are some very serious psycho-sociological issues with growing a human brain in a sheep's body, but IMO there is absolutely NOTHING scary or immoral about hearts, livers, etc.
Even the sentient-sheep proposition might not be automatically bad (anyone got a good New Zealand joke to go here?)--as long as they aren't suffering, as long as it's even POSSIBLE for a human consciousness to be happy or content in the body of a sheep, I don't see anything inherently immoral about it.
That's ok, the DMCA rejects [the rights of] you guys, too.
The point of this is that ANYONE can use it with cheap, off-the-shelf computer equipment. The NSA can spend millions on special hardware to keep their deathray plans a secret, but this is a VERY secure solution that can be had using a couple hundred dollars' worth of equipment, and the resulting disk can be securely read on ANY computer (that supports boot from CD.) You can even include anti-TEMPEST fonts, if the computer you're on isn't van Eck-proofed.
It would be ideal for mild-moderately sensative government data, and for safeguarding industrial secrets; no special hardware required.
You'll need "field researchers" to determine the absolute best/cheapest/most perverted sources of porn on the net, right?
Holy crap... this is a GREAT idea. Not just for porn, but for any read-only file that needs to be securly archived. Programs like TrueCrypt (OSS, btw--check it out) can provide an insane level of security (and even plausible deniability), but that all falls apart at the OS level, where all kinds of remnant temp files and recent document lists and spyware can reveal you every time you view said files.
But a self-encrypted CD and read-only OS really is (almost) foolproof. The only thing you'd need to worry about after this is van Eck radiation, hardware keyloggers, and, of course, the strength of your encryption algorithm/passphrase.
Open source or closed source--my guess is that as long as it has a spellchecker, you'll be happy.
I was assuming more fatigue-related accidents, but yeah, that could be it, too.
Then fucking keep it on DST and stop going back. There, problem fucking solved and no one loses any sleep over it.
(If you don't want your kids to wait at their busstop in the dark, then change the time they have to go to school.)
BTW, this is not just a matter of "discomfort." Studies have shown that there are more traffic-related fatalities in the days after we "spring forward."
Aw, GREAT, now that you've said that it's been slashdotted!
;p
Oh, what? Oh, uh, YEAH! Horrible, vile perversions! Grandparent should be banned, or something.
Can't we just admit we don't have a freakin' clue and move along?
...but he was right. He took a stab in the dark, figured out an explanation that worked (even though it sounded insane from a "common sense" point of view), and the evidence proved him right. Time and space are relative--we know this for a fact now, because other scientists set out to prove (or disprove) Einstein's crazy ideas. We're not so sure about Dark Energy/inflation ripples/mystical tomatoes, and hell, we might never know for sure, but it's obvious that SOMETHING is going on here, and I for one am glad that the scientists of today are coming up with these all of these cheesy, crazy explanations.
Move along to what? Above all else, science is supposed to try to explain these mysteries. To give up because we don't have a (seemingly) elegant or simple explanation is, well, the anthesis of the scientific method. You've got to come up with a theory. Maybe it sounds good, and maybe it doesn't--the only real question is, does it explain the phenomenon being observed?
If I knew Einstein back in 1905, I would've told him he needed to lay off the crack pipe. "Matter bending space? Relative velocity creating differing timeframes? Dude, what a fantasy, what a KLUDGE! You can't just go ripping apart some of the basic assumptions of science just because you want Maxwell's and Newton's ideas to play nicely together."
I don't mean to diss Groening's work, but I think you misspelled "Firefly."
I didn't say it didn't have its uses. I said, it would be too much of a hassle (...for Jane and Joe Sixpack.)
Even if you do store the passphrase locally (or better yet, just random key material), you still need a single, centralized authority that matches your email address up with a public key. Otherwise, Jane and Joe Sixpack will have to deal with keyrings... again, too much trouble just to share the latest pictures of junior.
I think that if the email world could actually agree on such a centralized authority, the spam problem would've been taken care of a long time ago.
Like I said, "it helps protect those of us who already take it seriously (it's a needle in a haystack sort of thing)"
For this and the other reasons you stated, I fully support the idea of wanton encryption, but in practice "Jane and Joe Sixpack" (the great-grandparent's comment, which I was replying to) don't give a crap. Even if it's turned on in Outlook by default, they'll get tech support (or their kids) to turn it off because passwords and keyrings are too much trouble for them. Yes, I suppose you could remove the password and use a local keyfile, then have some kind of centralized server that Outlook asked whenever it needed a public key, but let's be realistic here... M$ isn't going to spend a lot of money--and severely piss off the NSA--just to include a feature that the vast majority of their customers will not care about.
On the other hand, the Linux camp might create such a system... but only once Linux becomes more popular with Jane and Joe Sixpack.
What does Jane and Joe sixpack need with PGP encryption?
I mean yeah, I'd like to see other people take privacy more seriously--if nothing else, it helps protect those of us who already take it seriously (it's a needle in a haystack sort of thing)--but people would rather read their mail instantly than have to bother remembering yet another password.
It's easy to see how a great flood would kill off 90% of all marine life.
But perhaps you'd better break it down, you know, for all of us retards out here.
So you're saying that George W. Bush is the only truly free-willed American left?
This is a failing of your education; not a failing of the science itself. I was told a number of outright lies too, especially in history, but just because our educational system is so shitty (textbooks in particular) doesn't mean you can write off the entire thing as a pseudoscience. You're sort of correct. The evolution-causing mutations are usually bigger than 1/1000 of an inch. A common misconception is that they have to be incredibly miniscule, but that simply isn't the case. Look around you; people eyes are not all set at the same exact spot on their face. The differences are slight, but they are certainly bigger than 1/1000 of an inch.
To a fish trying to evade a predator or capture its prey, it certainly could matter if its eyes are 1/16 of an inch higher. No, it wouldn't be a huge difference, nor would it make a difference in every higheyed fish's life, but in a large population over an extended period of time, statistics will work its magic. Fish with eyes 1/16 will be slightly more likely to thrive (assuming that this trait does indeed help them spot food or avoid predators.) Eventually, the majority of the fish population will have high eyes simply because of competition for resources and statistics. Then one day a fish is born with even higher eyes, and the same exact process happens over again.
So you see, the mutations are small enough to happen by mere chance, yet they are significant enough to have an enormous cumulative impact, provided one allows them millions upon millions of years to happen.
I meant to say: ...because of the Anthropic Principle (see link) and the very simple tautology of "that which survives, survives."