apparently they tried to stop shortages by outlawing "hoarding". They arrested a guy and confiscated gasoline because he collected from neighbors and went beyond the gas shortages to bring back gas to them. The big screw up on his side was putting it in non-gas approved containers, but the charge was actually hoarding supplies.
His "crime" was showing by his example how passive and lazy most other people were. Most people who are embarassed by a better example seek revenge, as though their lackluster ability to plan for eventualities is the fault of anyone else; this is just a collective form of such childishness codified into law. Too many think the government is going to make it all better so they don't keep some emergency supplies on hand to be prepared, even when they could afford to. It's not that they are so stupid. It's that they feel so privileged, that concern for their own well-being should be someone else's job.
Incidentally, getting what you can and then sharing it with your neighbors is the very opposite of hoarding. Not only should the charge be thrown out, the law enforcement officer who issued it should be fired.
i have been having a pulse audio problem on my linux box any suggestions for a replacement just use alsa or anything else?
I personally just use ALSA for everything.
I use Gentoo so this system has never had PulseAudio installed (the way Gentoo works, I would only get Pulse by putting it there myself, which I won't).
Ubuntu and most major distributions have wiki pages concerning PulseAudio and how to remove it. Most of the time it's as simple as running a command or two involving your package manager. Binary distros tend to build programs with all features enabled and they simply won't use functionality you don't actually have (for example mplayer on stock Debian complains about not finding LIRC support when run in a terminal but this won't stop playback).
Or worse, you get old people who are out of touch with modern life and making decisions based on how they think things should be, not on how it really is.
The problem with old people (assuming they are not suffering from dementia) isn't that they are out of touch. That would only matter in a few cases which are closely tied to the use of technology, like a few modern copyright cases. The vast majority of jury trials probably wouldn't fit that description.
The problem with old people is that this particular generation of them is so goddamned self-absorbed. They have an incredible sense of entitlement and think they should receive a special respect (that they are not willing to set an example of) merely because they consume oxygen.
There are of course exceptions but by and large this is how they are. Just consider that the Baby Boomers will be the first generation of elders to leave their grandchildren with a less prosperous nation than they had in their day. That doesn't just happen. It takes work. And no one is more politically active than retirees.
I've heard viable arguments in the past for having professional jurors.....pay people and that would be their job....?
That way, they could know the law better....make more intelligent decisions maybe?
I know you mean well but this is a really, really terrible idea.
You see the way that the bar association (let's call it what it is: a guild) has turned the legal system into a sort of secular priesthood, with its own "scriptures" which are thoroughly incomprehensible to the uninitiated? Ever wonder why they use so much Latin and invent so many terms and jargon particular to this guild? Ever wonder why so many laws are so needlessly complex?
Because lawyers make more money that way. They don't want the law to be easily understood by the average person, any more than the medieval Catholic Church wanted to have Bibles in everyone's native language. That would cut out the middleman, you see.
You don't really want to do that to juries too. It's bad enough that this has happened to the legislators, the judges, and the attorneys. Jurors are just about the only thing left, and even so, they tend to receive rather robotic/algorithmic instructions.
Jurors are the very last bastion where the everyman can participate in this system in a meaningful way. The only reason we have jurors (sadly de-emphasized nowadays) is not to parse legal theories and go into the microscope to define the word "is" and all of that. We have jurors so that people can say "this SHOULD NOT be illegal in the first place, I don't care how many theories they come up with".
or if youre in a "work at will" state where theyll fire you for being on jury duty, but officially say it was for some other bullshit reason, and they youre ass-out-of-luck. hurray for "work at will"!
You can thank the unions which, if left unchecked, tend to more and more closely resemble the mafia, for that one.
IOW, such laws were not passed until after some powerful unions started getting out of control. Until then, there was no perceived need for them. Note, I don't think unions are bad in principle at all. The company has much more bargaining power than the individual employee and some way to balance that is desirable. It just loses desirability when it becomes as bad as what it was meant to stand against. Then you wind up with laws that have undesirable side-effects.
Thank you. This word needs to get out more. I've met multiple people who believe the have an obligation to vote at every election. They'll vote even if they know zero about the election. I don't know who the hell started this idea, but it's dangerous and obviously stupid.
Apparently by telling the truth, you pissed in some mod's cornflakes. Quoting above because it deserves all the visibility I can give.
Exactly. Because if I ever get called to jury duty for a murder/homicide case, if the guilty party isn't going to get the death penalty, I'll do my part to nullify the jury and let them go because I believe the penalty isn't harsh enough.
Yup, jury nullification all the way.
You respond as though he had said "for murder cases" or "talking only personally about what Smooth Wombat would do" or "unconditionally nullify all cases without regard for how just the applicable law is".
Except, of course, that isn't what he said at all.
The level of reading comprehension you are showing in this post is staggeringly bad. And far too common.
Can we once and for all recognize what you did there as a form of stupidity?
Have you ever considered the possibility that some people actually *value* a walled garden?
Some people highly value smoking crack. This alone is not proof of merit.
Like nearly everyone who isn't a tech geek? Which is like 99% of the people buying these devices?
If you are claiming that only "tech geeks" could possibly appreciate unrestricted freedom of choice, that is interesting. I would be willing to entertain your reasoning, but so far I haven't seen it. Personally, I think it's a nice euphamistic way of saying that most people are far too stupid to be trusted with choices. The funny thing about that, is that if stupidity is universally expected, it tends to become the norm. When it's viewed as pathological, it tends to be limited to only the few who really can't do better.
I also have doubts that it's healthy to design everything for the absolute beginner, rather than viewing "newbie" as a transitory and most temporary stage along the path to at least some small degree of competence. But it's difficult to have this conversation around here. Few seem to recognize that "small degree of competence" does not mean "expert" due to some strange tendency to go to extremes. It's a bit mysterious, since it's inconsistent with any contact with reality and its myriad shades of grey.
This means Jack Shit, it's standard mokey politics for an incoming boss, sack a few high profile monkeys and the other monkeys will fall into line. A boss who isn't noticed and can't hand pick his entorage is a figure head, not a leader.
When you are insecure and/or can't earn the genuine respect and admiration of those around you by means of your talent, expertise, and inspiring leadership, I suppose you might become desperate enough to resort to such Machiavellian tactics as this.
If he can't be better than a monkey, he wants to be the biggest monkey. What a shame that so many don't understand this is not real respect. Not even close. Of course it's not realistic to expect basic wisdom from the kind of dehumanized sociopaths who tend to run corporations, but I can dream.
So how should people who understand this fact go about convincing Disney, Fox, Paramount, Sony, Universal, and Warner Bros. of this?
Their ignorance is our bliss.
Technologically unsound DRM and largely unenforcable draconian copyright laws means that their efforts WILL fail. How stubborn and thick-headed they are will determine how many tens of millions of dollars (that could have enriched their shareholders) they will waste on programmers and lobbyists before they are forced to admit it.
What we really need is a movement among shareholders. Let them start seeing every dollar spent on DRM and lobbying for more copyright as management's failure to meet their fiduciary responsibilities. Unfortunately this seems just like the War on (some) Drugs, in that decades of failure still hasn't convinced the True Believers that it isn't gonna work. That part is just plain sad. People who deny reality are unfit to make these decisions.
Occasionally someone will have the decency to say something like "hmm that's a good point, you've made me think differently about this" but real adults who can do that are rare. Most are just overgrown two-year-olds, fevered egos trying to save face as if they are fooling anyone.
"MOST" are just overgrown two-year-olds -- do you believe this is a BAD THING? A very big PROBLEM with the world?! If so, do you think it is insurmountable, that this is how things must always be, or do you think they could be better, where 50% were real adults?
Well the problem is that when immature egos become the mainstream, they create a culture that encourages other immature egos and lets them live an entire lifetime without ever suspecting that maybe, just maybe, there is something better.
The minority who question are easy to disregard. No, I don't think it will always be that way. It will change voluntarily because people wake up. Or it will change the hard way, because the kind of society these people build is never sustainable. It always breaks and collapses horribly and must then be rebuilt.
Occasionally someone will have the decency to say something like "hmm that's a good point, you've made me think differently about this" but real adults who can do that are rare. Most are just overgrown two-year-olds, fevered egos trying to save face as if they are fooling anyone.
Yeah. You've done that to me a few times. Like everyone, I very carefully looked over everything you wrote about ten times beforehand, and unlike everyone I admitted you had me. It's rare for me to get things wrong, and much more common to end with an "agree to disagree" stance, but... being able to admit it feels a lot better than being annoyed. Being wrong for me, once I'm over the initial shock of having tripped over it, is exciting and refreshing. It means there's something about the world that isn't known (to me anyway).
And what kind of scientist, geek, or technology person would I be if I didn't get excited by new, shiny things?:)
Yeah. I see it a lot like you do. Once I've committed the mistake, then I was in fact wrong. Nothing will change that. It's a matter of dealing with it like an adult and not entertaining this fantasy of myself as a perfect being who never makes mistakes.
If you want to be right so badly, that's how you do it, by correcting your wrongs. Not by lying about them. Then you slowly become more and more correct. In fact I think you are being modest/generous by saying I've done that to you a few times. You generally have your shit together. It's pretty rare I see you get something even slightly off.
I am thinking of changing my sig. I'll have to figure out how best to word it, but something like "the small-minded worry about fault and blame, while the wise consider cause and effect". One is personal and relative. The other is interested in what actually happened.
The problem isn't whether or not it's "easy to use".
The problem is that it's designed to be easy to use on tablets and tablets are rubbish for doing real work. On desktop machines... it's crap.
That fails to explain why a three-year-old has no problems using it... on a standard desktop PC. Like what the summary describes.
I propose that the three-year-old likes learning new things and that is why he had no problems with Win 8 and probably won't have showstopper problems with any other system. For him, learning is based on curiosity and wonder and the thrill of discovery.
Let him get a bit older. Then give him 12 years or so of schooling where learning is rote memorization that's pounded into your head - whether you like it or not - by people who treat you in a dehumanized fashion, like a number on a spreadsheet. Then he'll hate learning too. Then he'll work some job and require "retraining" after an upgrade because the functionality has remained the same, but the location of some superficial menu items has changed. It will be enough to confuse him. Gone will be the easy ability to take a look at the new interface and say "oh, they just moved it over there, but it does the same thing, I see" like he can do now.
Unless they take great pains to remain actual individuals, they will succumb.
It's probably not fair to average Windows users to compare them to a three-year-old. The three-year-old doesn't know it's supposed to be too hard, so it isn't. It's too much like pitting the average couch potato against a professional boxer. There is no sense in betting on the outcome.
Now, if you'd be so kind, please reply with another wall of text only tangentially-related, as is traditional when someone pulls your pants down around your ankles and giggles at your ineptitude in a public forum...
When I do it, they usually just pretend like they never got around to reading that part. Even if they read and replied to everything before and after it.
Occasionally someone will have the decency to say something like "hmm that's a good point, you've made me think differently about this" but real adults who can do that are rare. Most are just overgrown two-year-olds, fevered egos trying to save face as if they are fooling anyone.
You *still* believe pirating is stealing, even after spending time on slashdot?
(If you didn't mean to say loot, that's cool, we all make mistakes, just say so)
Tell people here that you use GPL-licensed code in a closed-source product and see how fast you'll be accused of stealing.
If the standard song or TV show or movie came with a license as generous as the GPL, and I violated it, I would call myself an asshole (not a thief because infringement is not stealing, but definitely an asshole).
It's one thing to thumb your nose at unreasonable restrictive demands that are unfit for the Information Age. It's quite another to have a license that is reasonable, not asking too much, and not terribly restrictive and then still violate it. One of those deserves to be honored a lot more than the other one. That's because one of those is a lot more honorable.
How about not punishing people for such a ridiculous thing in the first place? Expecting people to be perfect is ludicrous and destroys respect for both the law and police officers.
That bird flew away from the nest a long time ago.
Ever since about 1980 there was a movement in law enforcement called "proactive policing". Prior to that, police were much less aggressive in terms of actively trying to find violations themselves. Other than regular patrols, they tended to come only when called. They try much harder now to look for trouble, to nail you for every little technical violation they can write up.
Believe it or not, a couple of generations ago the general attitude was "the police officer is your friend, if you have a problem go find a cop and he will help you". People believed in it, expected it, and it worked. The relationship now is much more adversarial because the police don't see us anymore as a community they are serving, like they once did (believe it or not). They see us as potential tickets and arrests to pad out their performance records. That's what proactive policing has done.
Incidentally, a lot of license plate scanners, GPS trackers, infrared scanners, and other surveillance tools local police are implementing are actually being funded with federal money. Most of the 1984 bullshit is coming from the federal government, not your local elected sheriff. Of course for their part, the local cops are only too happy to get all the new toys...
I do think that the baddies should be found and taken care of, but not at ALL costs
Note how the authorities never use the sledgehammer approach to stamping out crime (and potential crime) committed by politicians and police. It's only the citizenry that are subject to such heavy-handed approaches.
When it comes to politicians and police they tread softly, and with surgical precision. (If at all.)
And here I am all out of mod points.
If this doesn't get a +5 there is something wrong with the mods. It deserves it and you know it. He spoke the truth.
Going by my morning drive today, where the vast majority were speeding while a pack of state troopers were culling random cars from the herd, everybody is a psychotic driver. They could see there were over a dozen troopers, yet none of them slowed down unless they were specifically pulled over.
I listed psychosis as a possible reason why a person might murder. I did not state that all psychotic people will murder.
A duck is a bird. Not all birds are ducks.
ACs are having a hard time with basic logic today.
Not true. I joined the infantry to have a legal chance to kill someone.
Well, you see, I can waste my time and everyone else's by listing every possible exemption to everything I say... or I can list a major exemption and by implication show that I acknowledge that there are exceptions. Of course you'd miss out on a chance to insert statements about yourself and why you are special, but I consider that a small price to pay.
Besides which, I did say "murder another human being". It's right there in the post if you missed it. Killing that is done as part of military service is not generally considered murder.
I wouldn't consider myself a cold-blooded killer (can't be a killer if you haven't killed), nor psychotic (I don't hear voices, nor do I have delusions of what is going on around me).
Yeah your confusion there stems from failing to note that I used the word "murder" for a reason. See above.
I really wish my fellow Slashdotters would try a tad harder to note the difference between what I actually said and why I might have said it that way, versus the shit they make up.
Effective deterrent? That'll be why there are no more murders in US states with death penalty then. Wake up, deterrents don't work, people don't believe they will be caught.
Someone who would murder another human being (not talking about legitimate self-defense here) is either a cold-blooded killer or psychotic. There is something wrong with them that prevents them from considering things like the probability of getting caught, how wrong such an act would be, or that with modern forensics most murderers do in fact get caught. These are not people who think rationally and perform risk assessments prior to acting.
Compare to the sociopaths who tend to run corporations. They are all about their own self-interests. They do consider risk, in fact it's about the only thing that can alter their decision-making. A real law with teeth that poses a real threat to their income actually would make them think twice. Combine that with how unlikely it is that they would make a perfectly untracable phone call, plus the even lower likelihood of making a perfectly untracable financial transaction for whatever business they are doing, plus the number of complaints that would result from an automated system making tons of calls, and the likelihood of getting caught is very high.
Back on topic, I find not answering the phone works personally...
It's the same problem you find with spam. You and I may not talk to them and buy from them, but some moron out there will. Their costs are so low that they only need a very small rate of response to make money. Passing a law with teeth that targets a few centralized assholes is much easier than convincing every moron to put a little thought into how their actions affect others.
Slashdot Mirror
apparently they tried to stop shortages by outlawing "hoarding". They arrested a guy and confiscated gasoline because he collected from neighbors and went beyond the gas shortages to bring back gas to them. The big screw up on his side was putting it in non-gas approved containers, but the charge was actually hoarding supplies.
His "crime" was showing by his example how passive and lazy most other people were. Most people who are embarassed by a better example seek revenge, as though their lackluster ability to plan for eventualities is the fault of anyone else; this is just a collective form of such childishness codified into law. Too many think the government is going to make it all better so they don't keep some emergency supplies on hand to be prepared, even when they could afford to. It's not that they are so stupid. It's that they feel so privileged, that concern for their own well-being should be someone else's job.
Incidentally, getting what you can and then sharing it with your neighbors is the very opposite of hoarding. Not only should the charge be thrown out, the law enforcement officer who issued it should be fired.
i have been having a pulse audio problem on my linux box any suggestions for a replacement just use alsa or anything else?
I personally just use ALSA for everything.
I use Gentoo so this system has never had PulseAudio installed (the way Gentoo works, I would only get Pulse by putting it there myself, which I won't).
Ubuntu and most major distributions have wiki pages concerning PulseAudio and how to remove it. Most of the time it's as simple as running a command or two involving your package manager. Binary distros tend to build programs with all features enabled and they simply won't use functionality you don't actually have (for example mplayer on stock Debian complains about not finding LIRC support when run in a terminal but this won't stop playback).
Or worse, you get old people who are out of touch with modern life and making decisions based on how they think things should be, not on how it really is.
The problem with old people (assuming they are not suffering from dementia) isn't that they are out of touch. That would only matter in a few cases which are closely tied to the use of technology, like a few modern copyright cases. The vast majority of jury trials probably wouldn't fit that description.
The problem with old people is that this particular generation of them is so goddamned self-absorbed. They have an incredible sense of entitlement and think they should receive a special respect (that they are not willing to set an example of) merely because they consume oxygen.
There are of course exceptions but by and large this is how they are. Just consider that the Baby Boomers will be the first generation of elders to leave their grandchildren with a less prosperous nation than they had in their day. That doesn't just happen. It takes work. And no one is more politically active than retirees.
I've heard viable arguments in the past for having professional jurors.....pay people and that would be their job....?
That way, they could know the law better....make more intelligent decisions maybe?
I know you mean well but this is a really, really terrible idea.
You see the way that the bar association (let's call it what it is: a guild) has turned the legal system into a sort of secular priesthood, with its own "scriptures" which are thoroughly incomprehensible to the uninitiated? Ever wonder why they use so much Latin and invent so many terms and jargon particular to this guild? Ever wonder why so many laws are so needlessly complex?
Because lawyers make more money that way. They don't want the law to be easily understood by the average person, any more than the medieval Catholic Church wanted to have Bibles in everyone's native language. That would cut out the middleman, you see.
You don't really want to do that to juries too. It's bad enough that this has happened to the legislators, the judges, and the attorneys. Jurors are just about the only thing left, and even so, they tend to receive rather robotic/algorithmic instructions.
Jurors are the very last bastion where the everyman can participate in this system in a meaningful way. The only reason we have jurors (sadly de-emphasized nowadays) is not to parse legal theories and go into the microscope to define the word "is" and all of that. We have jurors so that people can say "this SHOULD NOT be illegal in the first place, I don't care how many theories they come up with".
and no new government structures are needed.
... which is why it won't have much support from the politicians who could make it happen.
At least not at the federal level. State and local governments have a much stronger appreciation for simple solutions that really might work.
or if youre in a "work at will" state where theyll fire you for being on jury duty, but officially say it was for some other bullshit reason, and they youre ass-out-of-luck. hurray for "work at will"!
You can thank the unions which, if left unchecked, tend to more and more closely resemble the mafia, for that one.
IOW, such laws were not passed until after some powerful unions started getting out of control. Until then, there was no perceived need for them. Note, I don't think unions are bad in principle at all. The company has much more bargaining power than the individual employee and some way to balance that is desirable. It just loses desirability when it becomes as bad as what it was meant to stand against. Then you wind up with laws that have undesirable side-effects.
Thank you. This word needs to get out more. I've met multiple people who believe the have an obligation to vote at every election. They'll vote even if they know zero about the election. I don't know who the hell started this idea, but it's dangerous and obviously stupid.
Apparently by telling the truth, you pissed in some mod's cornflakes. Quoting above because it deserves all the visibility I can give.
Exactly. Because if I ever get called to jury duty for a murder/homicide case, if the guilty party isn't going to get the death penalty, I'll do my part to nullify the jury and let them go because I believe the penalty isn't harsh enough.
Yup, jury nullification all the way.
You respond as though he had said "for murder cases" or "talking only personally about what Smooth Wombat would do" or "unconditionally nullify all cases without regard for how just the applicable law is".
Except, of course, that isn't what he said at all.
The level of reading comprehension you are showing in this post is staggeringly bad. And far too common.
Can we once and for all recognize what you did there as a form of stupidity?
Have you ever considered the possibility that some people actually *value* a walled garden?
Some people highly value smoking crack. This alone is not proof of merit.
Like nearly everyone who isn't a tech geek? Which is like 99% of the people buying these devices?
If you are claiming that only "tech geeks" could possibly appreciate unrestricted freedom of choice, that is interesting. I would be willing to entertain your reasoning, but so far I haven't seen it. Personally, I think it's a nice euphamistic way of saying that most people are far too stupid to be trusted with choices. The funny thing about that, is that if stupidity is universally expected, it tends to become the norm. When it's viewed as pathological, it tends to be limited to only the few who really can't do better.
I also have doubts that it's healthy to design everything for the absolute beginner, rather than viewing "newbie" as a transitory and most temporary stage along the path to at least some small degree of competence. But it's difficult to have this conversation around here. Few seem to recognize that "small degree of competence" does not mean "expert" due to some strange tendency to go to extremes. It's a bit mysterious, since it's inconsistent with any contact with reality and its myriad shades of grey.
This means Jack Shit, it's standard mokey politics for an incoming boss, sack a few high profile monkeys and the other monkeys will fall into line. A boss who isn't noticed and can't hand pick his entorage is a figure head, not a leader.
When you are insecure and/or can't earn the genuine respect and admiration of those around you by means of your talent, expertise, and inspiring leadership, I suppose you might become desperate enough to resort to such Machiavellian tactics as this.
If he can't be better than a monkey, he wants to be the biggest monkey. What a shame that so many don't understand this is not real respect. Not even close. Of course it's not realistic to expect basic wisdom from the kind of dehumanized sociopaths who tend to run corporations, but I can dream.
Client side security is an oxymoron.
So how should people who understand this fact go about convincing Disney, Fox, Paramount, Sony, Universal, and Warner Bros. of this?
Their ignorance is our bliss.
Technologically unsound DRM and largely unenforcable draconian copyright laws means that their efforts WILL fail. How stubborn and thick-headed they are will determine how many tens of millions of dollars (that could have enriched their shareholders) they will waste on programmers and lobbyists before they are forced to admit it.
What we really need is a movement among shareholders. Let them start seeing every dollar spent on DRM and lobbying for more copyright as management's failure to meet their fiduciary responsibilities. Unfortunately this seems just like the War on (some) Drugs, in that decades of failure still hasn't convinced the True Believers that it isn't gonna work. That part is just plain sad. People who deny reality are unfit to make these decisions.
Occasionally someone will have the decency to say something like "hmm that's a good point, you've made me think differently about this" but real adults who can do that are rare. Most are just overgrown two-year-olds, fevered egos trying to save face as if they are fooling anyone.
"MOST" are just overgrown two-year-olds -- do you believe this is a BAD THING? A very big PROBLEM with the world?! If so, do you think it is insurmountable, that this is how things must always be, or do you think they could be better, where 50% were real adults?
Well the problem is that when immature egos become the mainstream, they create a culture that encourages other immature egos and lets them live an entire lifetime without ever suspecting that maybe, just maybe, there is something better.
The minority who question are easy to disregard. No, I don't think it will always be that way. It will change voluntarily because people wake up. Or it will change the hard way, because the kind of society these people build is never sustainable. It always breaks and collapses horribly and must then be rebuilt.
Sometimes an alcoholic has to hit bottom.
Occasionally someone will have the decency to say something like "hmm that's a good point, you've made me think differently about this" but real adults who can do that are rare. Most are just overgrown two-year-olds, fevered egos trying to save face as if they are fooling anyone.
Yeah. You've done that to me a few times. Like everyone, I very carefully looked over everything you wrote about ten times beforehand, and unlike everyone I admitted you had me. It's rare for me to get things wrong, and much more common to end with an "agree to disagree" stance, but... being able to admit it feels a lot better than being annoyed. Being wrong for me, once I'm over the initial shock of having tripped over it, is exciting and refreshing. It means there's something about the world that isn't known (to me anyway).
And what kind of scientist, geek, or technology person would I be if I didn't get excited by new, shiny things? :)
Yeah. I see it a lot like you do. Once I've committed the mistake, then I was in fact wrong. Nothing will change that. It's a matter of dealing with it like an adult and not entertaining this fantasy of myself as a perfect being who never makes mistakes.
If you want to be right so badly, that's how you do it, by correcting your wrongs. Not by lying about them. Then you slowly become more and more correct. In fact I think you are being modest/generous by saying I've done that to you a few times. You generally have your shit together. It's pretty rare I see you get something even slightly off.
I am thinking of changing my sig. I'll have to figure out how best to word it, but something like "the small-minded worry about fault and blame, while the wise consider cause and effect". One is personal and relative. The other is interested in what actually happened.
That fails to explain why a three-year-old has no problems using it ... on a standard desktop PC. Like what the summary describes.
Three year old also has no problems with eating dog shit picked up from the ground.
Well yeah, he doesn't know that you can't do that. Seems my premise is sound.
The problem isn't whether or not it's "easy to use".
The problem is that it's designed to be easy to use on tablets and tablets are rubbish for doing real work. On desktop machines ... it's crap.
That fails to explain why a three-year-old has no problems using it ... on a standard desktop PC. Like what the summary describes.
I propose that the three-year-old likes learning new things and that is why he had no problems with Win 8 and probably won't have showstopper problems with any other system. For him, learning is based on curiosity and wonder and the thrill of discovery.
Let him get a bit older. Then give him 12 years or so of schooling where learning is rote memorization that's pounded into your head - whether you like it or not - by people who treat you in a dehumanized fashion, like a number on a spreadsheet. Then he'll hate learning too. Then he'll work some job and require "retraining" after an upgrade because the functionality has remained the same, but the location of some superficial menu items has changed. It will be enough to confuse him. Gone will be the easy ability to take a look at the new interface and say "oh, they just moved it over there, but it does the same thing, I see" like he can do now.
Unless they take great pains to remain actual individuals, they will succumb.
It's probably not fair to average Windows users to compare them to a three-year-old. The three-year-old doesn't know it's supposed to be too hard, so it isn't. It's too much like pitting the average couch potato against a professional boxer. There is no sense in betting on the outcome.
Now, if you'd be so kind, please reply with another wall of text only tangentially-related, as is traditional when someone pulls your pants down around your ankles and giggles at your ineptitude in a public forum...
When I do it, they usually just pretend like they never got around to reading that part. Even if they read and replied to everything before and after it.
Occasionally someone will have the decency to say something like "hmm that's a good point, you've made me think differently about this" but real adults who can do that are rare. Most are just overgrown two-year-olds, fevered egos trying to save face as if they are fooling anyone.
I'm not a fan of "me too" replies but sometimes there just isn't much else to add. So,
Amen, sister.
You *still* believe pirating is stealing, even after spending time on slashdot?
(If you didn't mean to say loot, that's cool, we all make mistakes, just say so)
Tell people here that you use GPL-licensed code in a closed-source product and see how fast you'll be accused of stealing.
If the standard song or TV show or movie came with a license as generous as the GPL, and I violated it, I would call myself an asshole (not a thief because infringement is not stealing, but definitely an asshole).
It's one thing to thumb your nose at unreasonable restrictive demands that are unfit for the Information Age. It's quite another to have a license that is reasonable, not asking too much, and not terribly restrictive and then still violate it. One of those deserves to be honored a lot more than the other one. That's because one of those is a lot more honorable.
How about not overspeed in the first place?
How about not punishing people for such a ridiculous thing in the first place? Expecting people to be perfect is ludicrous and destroys respect for both the law and police officers.
That bird flew away from the nest a long time ago.
Ever since about 1980 there was a movement in law enforcement called "proactive policing". Prior to that, police were much less aggressive in terms of actively trying to find violations themselves. Other than regular patrols, they tended to come only when called. They try much harder now to look for trouble, to nail you for every little technical violation they can write up.
Believe it or not, a couple of generations ago the general attitude was "the police officer is your friend, if you have a problem go find a cop and he will help you". People believed in it, expected it, and it worked. The relationship now is much more adversarial because the police don't see us anymore as a community they are serving, like they once did (believe it or not). They see us as potential tickets and arrests to pad out their performance records. That's what proactive policing has done.
Incidentally, a lot of license plate scanners, GPS trackers, infrared scanners, and other surveillance tools local police are implementing are actually being funded with federal money. Most of the 1984 bullshit is coming from the federal government, not your local elected sheriff. Of course for their part, the local cops are only too happy to get all the new toys...
Note how the authorities never use the sledgehammer approach to stamping out crime (and potential crime) committed by politicians and police. It's only the citizenry that are subject to such heavy-handed approaches.
When it comes to politicians and police they tread softly, and with surgical precision. (If at all.)
And here I am all out of mod points.
If this doesn't get a +5 there is something wrong with the mods. It deserves it and you know it. He spoke the truth.
I use Asterisk to prompt unknown callers with "Press 1 to be connected" before my phone will ring. Works like a charm.
That's a damned good idea. I appreciate simple, elegant, effective solutions like this.
Of course, if everyone started doing it there would be workarounds. Sometimes the passivity of the average person benefits us.
Going by my morning drive today, where the vast majority were speeding while a pack of state troopers were culling random cars from the herd, everybody is a psychotic driver. They could see there were over a dozen troopers, yet none of them slowed down unless they were specifically pulled over.
I listed psychosis as a possible reason why a person might murder. I did not state that all psychotic people will murder.
A duck is a bird. Not all birds are ducks.
ACs are having a hard time with basic logic today.
Not true. I joined the infantry to have a legal chance to kill someone.
Well, you see, I can waste my time and everyone else's by listing every possible exemption to everything I say ... or I can list a major exemption and by implication show that I acknowledge that there are exceptions. Of course you'd miss out on a chance to insert statements about yourself and why you are special, but I consider that a small price to pay.
Besides which, I did say "murder another human being". It's right there in the post if you missed it. Killing that is done as part of military service is not generally considered murder.
I wouldn't consider myself a cold-blooded killer (can't be a killer if you haven't killed), nor psychotic (I don't hear voices, nor do I have delusions of what is going on around me).
Yeah your confusion there stems from failing to note that I used the word "murder" for a reason. See above.
I really wish my fellow Slashdotters would try a tad harder to note the difference between what I actually said and why I might have said it that way, versus the shit they make up.
Kick their doors down and shoot their dog...
No we only do that for adult people who alter their consciousness in unauthorized ways.
Effective deterrent? That'll be why there are no more murders in US states with death penalty then. Wake up, deterrents don't work, people don't believe they will be caught.
Someone who would murder another human being (not talking about legitimate self-defense here) is either a cold-blooded killer or psychotic. There is something wrong with them that prevents them from considering things like the probability of getting caught, how wrong such an act would be, or that with modern forensics most murderers do in fact get caught. These are not people who think rationally and perform risk assessments prior to acting.
Compare to the sociopaths who tend to run corporations. They are all about their own self-interests. They do consider risk, in fact it's about the only thing that can alter their decision-making. A real law with teeth that poses a real threat to their income actually would make them think twice. Combine that with how unlikely it is that they would make a perfectly untracable phone call, plus the even lower likelihood of making a perfectly untracable financial transaction for whatever business they are doing, plus the number of complaints that would result from an automated system making tons of calls, and the likelihood of getting caught is very high.
Back on topic, I find not answering the phone works personally...
It's the same problem you find with spam. You and I may not talk to them and buy from them, but some moron out there will. Their costs are so low that they only need a very small rate of response to make money. Passing a law with teeth that targets a few centralized assholes is much easier than convincing every moron to put a little thought into how their actions affect others.