Because the first black president wants to be known as the guy who legalized pot?
If he wants any real respect, then yes. Politicians worthy of real respect can admit when something has failed and are willing to stop doing that failed thing and start doing something else.
I don't really see what his race has to do with it. It doesn't change the fact that marijuana prohibition was a bad idea.
"Facebook has blocked access to Friend Exporter, a Google Chrome application that helps users import their Facebook contacts into Google's new social network — Google Plus. "
Clearly Facebook is afraid to compete on the merits of its services. Isn't that the message whenever any sort of vendorlock is implemented?
I never before took Google's social network very seriously. Now that Facebook is showing fear of them, and acting so childish about it, I'm willing to reconsider that. To anyone with some sense, Facebook is providing a more stunning endorsement of Google's services than Google itself could have ever created.
(And no, I have not ever listened to much recent popular music. Not sure what I might discover if I did. I haven't yet heard a single song by "Lady GaGa" or "Justin Bieber" or... heck, that's all I can name.)
Believe me, you aren't missing anything worthwhile. There's only so many different ways a singer can whine about their inability to mature into an adult person with the self-knowledge to confidently select a life partner who's actually good for them to be with, and then invest the effort and patience it takes to form a healthy relationship. Apparently that's a complex and endlessly interesting subject for many. It's far from being inspiring or edifying or enlightening. You could hold your nose and call it "art" but you degrade the term by doing it.
It might not be sarcasm to suggest ritual purification after having one's ears tarnished with it.
If we valued EQ half as much as IQ we'd have a much better world.
Yes, it's lowest common denominator. There's no way you could have widespread common ground among millions of different people, for something as hugely diverse and personal as individual taste in music, without recourse to the lowest common denominator.
That is "lowest common denominator".
Just because it's "lowest" doesn't necessarily mean it's particularly "low", just that going any "higher" destroys the commonality. If you're talking about widespread common ground among millions of different people, then you're talking about lowest common denominator.
1. Decide that a term I used bothers you.
2. Miss the point being made.
3. Find a way to insert your offense at my term into the conversation.
4. Uh, profit?
Ever listen to much recent popular music? It's at around an 8th grade emotional level, usually about a failed relationship. That puts the low in lowest common denominator. I'm sorry if the correct way of naming things offends you.
This isn't like taking a survey of 5 million men and asking if they enjoy getting hit in the testicles. There will be an extremely common answer to that question. It's not a low common denominator because not getting hit in the testicles really is the superior choice when compared to getting hit in the testicles. This should be easy to understand.
Now then. Music is about art, expression, and personal taste and ability to appreciate. In other words, it's a very individual thing. The superior choice is what suits your tastes after you get to know yourself well enough to have explored and refined your tastes and preferences. What is the superior choice for you may not be the superior choice for me. You aren't going to get 5 million people to all agree on something unless you severely dumb down the available choices. Then you can get something approaching the either-or scenario of whether or not to get hit in the testicles. But to do that, you first have to take the incredible diversity and brilliant variety of real art and human expression available and reduce it to a few formulaic choices. This can be called lowering the available choices. It puts the low in lowest common denominator.
It doesn't get much easier to understand than this. Even if you still don't like it. Either tell me why my reasoning is unsound and be prepared to demonstrate why, or find some other agenda in need of an apologist and go defend that.
Pretty much any genre of creation based upon personal taste is going to have some sort of a formula that's pure lowest common denominator.
Yes, it's lowest common denominator. There's no way you could have widespread common ground among millions of different people, for something as hugely diverse and personal as individual taste in music, without recourse to the lowest common denominator. It's a race to the bottom of sophistication and variety in order to superficially appeal to the largest number of people possible, increasing sales.
The more likely explanation is that it's what record execs think will sell and consequently it's what they push.
Sometimes I call it assembly-line music. It's a rejection of the idea that music is about art and expression, that it has a message with meaning, because as soon as you recognize that you must also recognize that not all people want a particular message or appreciate a given meaning. To the execs this would mean reducing their target audience. It would mean lower sales. It is in their interests to view it not as art, but as a mass-produced product. They see it this way and it shows.
Making it as formulaic and cookie-cutter as possible just means they have a repeatable business process that yields a relatively predictable result. Every car manufacturer or chip fabrication plant wants the same thing. It's the rationale behind interchangable parts. The difference, of course, is that in manufacturing having consistent processes and relatively identical parts is an advantage to the customer; in music it's an advantage to the distributor.
Refined individual taste and a desire for uniqueness are the adversaries of this system. Those traits would mean the companies would have to do a lot more work to enjoy the same level of sales. They'd actually have to take a risk once in a while.
Really the only new development is that the Internet is challenging the record companies' position as undisputed gatekeeper. It is now much easier to learn about music that doesn't have a large marketing budget to promote it. At some point more people may decide that relying on a monied interest to promote something to you is bass-ackwards, that the industry actually exists to provide what you demand, that it'll start looking that way once individuals become easier to find.
You'd have to be mentally defective to steal at an airport. They're the most tightly secured and monitored civilian areas.
No, you just have to think you're above the law. That the cop was wrong about this is the exception and not the rule.
The norm is that cops who break the law, including those who engage in unprovoked violence against innocent civilians, receive a paid vacation known as admistrative suspension.
No surprise. Cops are people too, with all the usual failings.
At least this bad cop was arrested instead of "protecting their own", but let's see how he is prosecuted.
The fact that they are actually applying the law equally and not regarding the cop as above the law is the surprise.
If only they'd prosecute police brutality, corruption, and intimidation (particularly of anyone with a camera) with such fervency. Then they might stop looking so much like the thugs they're supposed to protect us from.
If that sounds too categorical, that's for a well-founded reason. The cops who don't abuse power themselves but keep silent when their co-workers do the same are equally guilty. They sometimes call it "the blue wall of silence". I call it the blue wall of cowardice. It is most unbecoming of such otherwise brave people.
For which reason driving while intoxicated (on anything, not just alcohol) is against the law. That's reasonable because it punishes irresponsible behavior while leaving responsible drinkers alone.
It is much easier to determine a person's level of intoxication and impairment from alcohol than from weed.
If there was a simple, accurate breathalyzer-style test for "too high to drive," I'd be much more supportive of legalizing marijuana. That and the fact that actual impairment of mental faculties from weed last longer than the high does - you could be sober, yet still somewhat impaired from marijuana. With alcohol, impairment pretty closely corresponds to concentration in the body.
And we're back around, full-circle, to the key point that so many are failing to appreciate. People who want to smoke weed are already doing it. People who drive while high are already doing it. That's because the War on Drugs is a total failure in terms of its stated goals. Right now there are DUI charges filed against drivers who were on marijuana while driving. We already have this problem. We already have ways of dealing with it. That's the reality.
The only meaningful difference is whether there might be an accompanying possession charge, or whether we want to only issue criminal charges against people who are actually endangering others. That's all there is.
There comes a point at which you have to draw a line. Personally, my ideal world would be one in which no one had any desire for chemical stimulus. Alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, everything has health risks. In regards to my own body I think those risks are too high.
You arrived at that conclusion on your own and have chosen to act accordingly. All other people want is the opportunity to do the same. There is a big difference between reasonable laws that protect others from the negligence and irresponsibility of others, versus legislating morality.
There are many people who can drink responsibly, but there are many more who kill people in drunk driving accidents every year.
For which reason driving while intoxicated (on anything, not just alcohol) is against the law. That's reasonable because it punishes irresponsible behavior while leaving responsible drinkers alone.
Freedom is not and has never been free. There will always be members of society who do not accept the responsibility that comes with freedom and they must be dealt with. Unlike legislating morality, this a legitimate use of the law enforcement power of government. It's precisely what law enforcement and the court systems are for.
You can try banning alcohol, again, but that didn't stop people from drinking. You can keep trying to ban drugs, some more, but it isn't restricting access to drugs. These are facts, and as facts, they don't particularly care how you feel about them. Perhaps we can all agree that laws which ignore facts belong in books of fiction, not our books of law.
The cold fact of ANY mind-altering substance is just that, it's a mind-altering substance. An altered state of mind could be extremely dangerous in certain situations - driving, caring for children, even using a stove.
Driving can be dangerous. So can power tools. Do we respond to this by banning automobiles and power tools? No. Instead, we educate, we demonstrate and encourage responsible use. We communicate that there is the expectation they be done correctly. We are clear about the fact that responsible use is a matter of decision and priority.
Back in my college dorm a few guys almost burned down the building because they were high. When the pizza they ordered arrived they threw it in the oven, box and all. I'm all for personal freedoms, but when people with chemically impaired judgement start a fire and I have to stand out in the snow in my robe at 3 AM for 45 minutes then having those guys punished sounds pretty good to me.
I fully agree that they should be punished. However, they should be punished for starting a fire and causing losses to others, not for doing drugs. Plenty of people drink and do drugs without burning the place down. Likewise, plenty of sober people do something stupid and cause fires, both in buildings and in forests. When they do, we punish them for having started a fire, not for being distracted by something less important.
You might call it wallowing in ignorance, but some people are a danger to others. That's just a fact of life. We as a society generally accept the concept of putting a psychopathic killer in a mental institution or even just denying a driver's license to someone who has physically impaired perception or reflexes.
We sure do. But we wait until they actually harm someone before we punish them and that's critical. Or we wait until they show actual evidence of criminal insanity, or actual evidence of being physically unable to handle the demands of driving a car. We don't yet punish people for thought crimes. We should not continue to punish people for state-of-consciousness crimes. Only for how they handle it and what results they allow.
It's just like any responsibility of the state, to protect as many people's freedoms as possible. Your free will ma
Obama's simply too conservative to sign a bill like this. He should, but he won't. The fact that marijuana is 100% safe isn't enough to sway the screaming, mindless Christians, and Obama needs at least some of their votes.
Take a hard honest look at the world and you'll find that those who wish to control others come in all stripes and operate under all banners. Every person who ever gets offended at anything and responds not by no longer watching/viewing/reading/listening to that thing, but by seeking to have it banned, is also part of the problem. Every person who thinks they know what is best for you and that their recommendations for how you live should have the force of law behind them are also part of the problem.
Anyone who would ever tell consenting adults what they may do with their bodies, in the privacy of their homes, with their money, or what they may read, watch, and think is quite plainly an abomination. So long as force or fraud is not used to harm an unwilling participant, we are and should be free to live our lives as we see fit and then bear the consequences.
If some Christians were the only ones who failed to understand that, it would be a drastic improvement. You have to get over your religious bigotry if you are to actually understand the scope of the problem. No, I'm not offended by it -- why would I bother handling it in such an immature and cowardly fashion when I can meet it head-on and explain exactly what is wrong with it, secure that my reason is sound? I have no reason to get offended and look for a way to punish you for engaging in this kind of bigotry. The fact that you will never understand the nature of the problem until you get over that means you're doing a great job of punishing yourself.
Wallowing in the darkness of ignorance and feeling powerless to effect any meaningful change is worse than anything I would hypothetically do to you (emphasis on hypothetically, just to be clear). That's something the childish people who scream about how offended they are will never understand: the built-in justice of being harmed or edified not for what you do, but by it. They haven't the understanding or the dispassion. They're too busy serving an impulse to control that will never be satisfied.
How are you going to teach people how to say no to that kind of criminal? We have spent a couple of decades scaring people with 'you must protect your computer, if you don't protect it you are an idiot, etc'. All that 'teaching' is what directly lead to this scam. So what do you propose teaching? That your computer will never pop up a warning saying an infection was found, and click to do something about it? Many (all?) legit virus scanners do exactly that. Never purchase something just because your computer said to? What happens when your AV subscription is up and you get prompted for exactly that (with the same dire 'you could be exposed' messages that the scams use?
You would teach them that there is no substitute for an actual understanding of the systems you are using and how they work. With computers and networks, enough basic competence to stop the majority of these scams is much more achievable than true expertise. It would be difficult, but unlike apprehending every last malicious person on the planet, it could be done. We routinely spend more resources than it would require on far less worthy things. It would begin with the realization that there is something wrong with using a system for years without ever knowing much more about it than when you began.
The biggest obstacle is the pity-driven, well-meaning but thoroughly misguided mentality of validating and legitimizing the ignorance that exists. It takes many forms. A common one is the fallacy of the excluded middle, wherein you are either a total expert or a complete newbie with no degree of competence in-between. Another common one is the unstated, implicit notion that there is anything normal or natural about the failure to slowly acquire knowledge over time with experience (leading to what I call the "permanent newbie"). Yet another is the idea that a literate person with 'Net access ever needs to wait around for someone else to educate them.
Sometimes the easy way is to go ahead and do it the hard way. Your alternative is to try multiple "easy ways", have all of them fail miserably, and then fall back to doing it the hard way. The only people benefitting from the status quo are law enforcement agencies and those with investments in the cottage industry of all the security "solutions" designed to protect users from themselves.
Self-directed education can be a joyful process of discovery powered by curiosity and a desire for independence. I know that doesn't suit the top-down bureaucracies involved in our school systems. It definitely doesn't suit the politicians and marketers who view independent thought and the initiative to not wait on strangers to hand you easy answers as obstacles in their path to power and gratification, but maybe, just maybe, the edification and advancement of the average person is more important than what they value. Maybe, just maybe the portrayal as normal of undisciplined immaturity that doesn't want to invest in the quality of its own experience, that denies the notion of getting out of something what one is willing to put into it, inevitably serves the interests of someone other than we the users.
Knowledge and understanding really is power. If you depend on anyone else to hand you those things, that person has power over you that they may abuse. If people realize that their literacy and access to information is all they need to educate themselves, if they realize the freedom represented by not being beholden to someone else to tell you what they think you need to know and how you should feel about and act on that knowledge, well, making criminals' jobs more difficult is one of the least significant benefits we would receive. It would be nothing short of a new Golden Age. It would change everything from the way people live their personal lives, to the kinds of businesses they run, to the kind of leaders they demand, to their views on what really matters in this life.
Unfortunately it's always that reactive flagging, instead of proactive rules
They are merely following the examples which are all around them. It's the "virus scanner" model instead of the "security system" model. The difference is a security system is all about proactive prevention, not after-the-fact damage control.
Damage control has its place, as a last resort. It should not be the focus of the effort though.
So if people were smarter, they wouldn't walk by the park and night which would keep them from being targets of mugging, which in turn will make muggers become more productive citizens?
Mugging is a violent crime. Since it involves the use of force, it does not depend on the cooperation of the victim. I see the point you're trying to make here but it just isn't a valid comparison. Saying no to a mugger won't stop him from getting your wallet and is likely to provoke him.
These scammers are non-violent fraudsters. Without the active cooperation of their victims, they cannot do harm. The would-be victims can say "no thanks" and stop the crime cold. That's the difference between fraud and force, though both are evil.
All I am saying is: since people actually can say "no" to this kind of criminal, why aren't we teaching them how to? It's not an either-or proposition. We can send law enforcement after the criminals while also educating their targets. The fact that we don't equates to turning a blind eye to the underlying vulnerability.
I also wanted to add that you are providing a great example of how to have constructive discussion. This is the sort which edifies and elevates. Sadly it seems to be a lost art of sorts. That's why I am specifically pointing that out, not so much for you but for others who need examples to understand the difference.
Thank you for expanding on a worthy subject without making it degenerate into the "I'm right so you have to be wrong" polarity that's only really appropriate for undisputable facts. I'm appreciative but I am not complementing you. You complement yourself by handling it this way. It's not a matter of agreement or whether I see this exactly the way that you do. It's simply nice to converse with an actual adult.
I agree, to a point. We should, though, understand the views of history, and the social norms and mores of various cultures through history. In other words we should understand what the baseline, normal, views were. We risk dismissing every single person in history that did something brilliant, or had a brilliant idea, because they were "antisemetic", "sexist", "racist", "anti-communist", or a "papist".
As a person who invested extensive time and money in an education studying historical ideas, I've noticed that this is a huge problem; dismissing historical figures because they don't line up with our current transitory societal norms. Not liking Jews (or being dismissive of women, or blacks, or...) in a time when not liking Jews (or women, or blacks, or...) was common place isn't as important as not liking Jews (or...) now, when this view has mostly been exposed as bigoted lunacy.
To me this is all so simple. It is evident to me that all the controversy and conflict comes from the inability of many to look at something objectively without being a slave and bond-servant to their own tender sensibilities. Dispassionate evaluation without inserting yourself and your feelings into every little thing is clearly the superior way. Having feelings, even passionate ones, is good and well so long as you are their master; otherwise the proper order is reversed and they serve to foster ignorance. This ignorance is the very worst kind because the person cherishes it, will defend it, and will not part with it easily.
Let's take someone like Thomas Jefferson. In many ways he was a true individual. His love of freedom and his willingness to take great personal risk to advance it is nothing less than heroic. But he owned slaves and probably compelled sexual favors the female slaves who were definitely not in a position to refuse.
To me this is so simple. His willingness to own slaves is the sense in which he was not ahead of his time, did not have the capacity to independently evaluate the morality of the situation, was merely a product of his culture. He was not a perfect free-thinking individual. The fact that he was an exceptionally great man in so many other ways does not contradict this. What free thought he had was put to excellent use. What free thought he lacked blemished his memory.
You see this in politics even today. It's like we want people to be perfect saints who are absolutely blameless in every conceivable way. Such people generally do not exist. We keep getting disappointed about the fact that evil is everywhere, even within great men. It's as though this is a big surprise, as though there aren't many repetitive examples. This is called denial. If you love virtue and truth, stop worrying about people and things you cannot control. Work on yourself and stop depending on some messianic paragon of all virtue to show you the way. Even if there were such a leader today, making yourself a behavioral clone of him robs you of any true appreciation. That kind of change does not come from follow-the-leader, not even with the best possible leaders. It comes from the inside and moves outwards.
This is especially common with Hitler (ontopic, so Godwin averted); anyone in Germany in the mid-30's who even mentioned the name Hitler, or had any sympathy whatsoever with his politics (even if they weren't in favor, or aware of the extent of the "final solution" bits) are magically discredited. This ignores a whole bunch of context in favor of moralizing newthink. Oddly while we dismiss certain people (like Martin Heidegger) we completely ignore the more odious bits of people closer to us (Woodrow Wilson's eugenics binge).
Hitler was amazingly popular in the USA until the extent of his evil was better known. His talk of eugenics appealed to the "Social Darwinism" mentality of the old-money families. Wilson wasn't the only one who celebrated him. Henry Ford and many other businessmen thought he was jus
LMAO. That deserves some mod points but sadly the overlords at slashdot haven't consented to grace me with some in a while. I have excellent Karma so go figure.
I once asked Rob Malda about this and he was kind enough to explain it to me. It depends on a variety of things like how often you post; too much or too little and you don't get mod points so often. How new or old your account is also has a bearing on it. There's probably more to it than he explained to me but suffice to say it's not as simple as maintaining good karma. For example, some users get 15 mod points at a time while I have personally only received five at a time though I get them relatively frequently.
Back on topic, I have a mixed take on this. While I'm glad to see a legitimate use of police power to take down those who serve no purpose other than preying on others for their selfish gain, I don't see how this will fix the real problem. It seems like for each group they bust, a few more rise up to take its place. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if they look at how and why this group got caught and try to avoid making the same mistakes so they can stand a better chance of getting away with it.
This has a social engineering aspect but otherwise follows all of the same principles of computer security. It is not practical to apprehend every offender and prevent every new offender from rising up to cause more damage. It simply cannot be done. What is difficult, but possible, is to harden the targets, to increase the cost of compromise. For social engineering and other forms of deceit, that requires that we value, encourage, and cultivate knowledge and critical thinking. For so long as there are many vulnerable people who continue to fall for these schemes, and thereby enrich and reward the predators with the money they seek, you will never truly solve this problem.
It's not a matter of fairness or who deserves what. It's a matter of actually understanding the problem. It is true that stepping on a poisonous snake does not really injure the snake; it is likewise true that death by snake venom is too high a punishment for such an act, that the punishment grossly exceeds the crime. You can try explaining that to the snake only to find that it cannot be reasoned with. Yet if you know you are marching through an area with a high population of such snakes, the wise wear protective boots. If you know the Internet is a hostile network with criminals eager to defraud you, the wise maintain an awareness of such, perhaps do a little study of security best practices, and are glad that the price of protecting themselves is so low.
Read the bit in brackets. Just because something's judged right/wrong by you it doesn't mean it will be judged right/wrong by someone operating from a different set of principles. For GCHQ, Turing was wrong - not because he was gay but because he was not politically malleable. You can't study history by dismissing contemporary motivations and substituting your own.
Ah this old argument. Man. It's so easily shot down, it's a miracle it still persists. But okay, I'll indulge you.
So there is no absolute truth, right? Are you absolutely certain? You see, it defeats itself trivially and is therefore worthy of no more attention.
Not only should we compare history to our standards, it's one of the most important functions of history. Stop making this all about personal attacks (against those who hated Turing) and look at the big picture. What have we learned, if anything, from past injustices? Are we truly more advanced than those who came before us, or are we decaying into our own brand of decadence, our own ready excuses for mistreating and abusing others? Are we just "making nice" to cover that up with outward behavior? At the same time we see how wrong our ancestors were, do we have our own wrongs we prefer to deny? These are worthy questions. Your relativism would sweep them under the rug.
It's fucking shameful that history is taught in our schools in terms of "ok, memorize that so-and-so won X War on Date Y". It completely trivializes what could be understood from it.
People seem to forget that in the 60s and early 70s, the US had a great many liberal political terrorists within its borders, who committed more bombings in the early 70s, in Washington DC alone, than all the "right-wing" terrorists since, combined.
Does that mean that the right-wing terrorists are morally justified then in blowing up civilians as well, just because the liberals did it two generations ago? Huh, I missed that memo. I guess the victims of Atlanta and Oklahoma City, and their families can rest assured now that that their deaths were a necessity in order to balance out the moral inequity between the two ends of the US political spectrum.
Maybe the point was that all sorts of different people have engaged in this sort of behavior, that any sense of security gained from adherence to a stereotype is false, that a clear notion of what terrorism is and isn't is crucial to understanding it. Maybe the point was that certain "big scaries" are in vogue at certain times. In a previous time it was communism, now it's terrorism. Maybe political ideologies aren't the problem and the actual problem is the idiocy of using violence to force them on the unwilling.
You're basing your comment on the more hostile and coincidentally petty interpretation of that post. Other interpretations are available to you. Other interpretations better reflect what was plainly stated. I get that the "us against them" aspect of American politics is irritating and tremendously distracting. If you aren't careful, you're going to fixate on it exclusively.
That's an awful long screed about the breakdown of human interaction because of Facebook
3-4 short paragraphs is awfully long? Heh. Not much of a reader, then?
And it's not because of Facebook. Facebook is supplying what a market is demanding. I refer to the origin of that demand. In that sense you are right, it's nothing to do (directly) with Facebook. Facebook is the effect of a cause. It is not the cause. I'm not sure how you could have interpreted me in any other way, since all the other ways to interpret me are trivially shown to be invalid (course, instead of assuming I am a thinking being, you might need me to be wrong...).
Facebook is a useful tool for keeping in touch and maintaining pre-existing social groups. If your view of social interaction is as bleak as your post suggests, then you won't get anything out of Facebook... but that's nothing to do with Facebook.
In my case, I already have real human interaction with my friends and relatives. Actual face-to-face quality time.
The only use I'd have for Facebook would be to have superficial contact with people I don't spend actual quality time with. I don't find that desirable in the slightest. It would be like taking one of the finer things in life, making a standardized package for it, and trivializing the hell out of it. But then, I'm not really a member of this culture; I just happen to be in it. I have long overcome its fears of actual contact by realizing they are not in my interests.
If you really cannot understand the psychological impact a culture of divorce and bastard children and media manipulation and alienation has had on the last few generations, the way they have few or no models for healthy relationships and how this is spilling over even into friendships and business relationships, how being superficial is now considered cool, and why that might create an environment conducive to things like Facebook, just tell me you don't know what I am talking about and leave it at that.
It is, after all, hard to have a discussion about electrons with people who strongly believe electrons don't exist because they have never seen them.
You've never ran into the "friend of a friend guilt" trip, I see.
I have many friends on Facebook from back when I was a punk kid. A good portion of them grew up into decent adults, but a proportion of them are developmentally atrophied at 16-21. I have no problem being friends with the ones that grew up, but try to avoid the other group like the plague. Sadly many of the latter group have finally discovered computers and smart phones.
Now every time I go to a party or generally hang out with my old friends I get to spend an hour of people chastising me for not being friends with so-and-so (who happens to be in their mid-30s hanging out with 18 year old kids in back alleys doing drugs). I've had five people all gang up on me, trying to convince me of the merits of "friending" people who'd I rather never think of again. It gets worse when these people show up places, since then I have to listen to them guilt trip me as well.
If often comes to the point where I might as well "friend" them, since it saves me hassle and stress in the long run. I suppose it doesn't matter, since I only actually check Facebook once a month or so (if even) when I have absolutely nothing better to do. Its not like my feed is full of any important information or communications to begin with, just minor burbles and desperate pleas for attention.
If you're a pushover, the wrong kind of people will exploit that for their own selfish reasons. If you need to have the approval of people, the wrong kind of people will exploit that for their own selfish purposes.
This is older than history. Facebook hasn't changed that. Facebook hasn't brought it about.
You actually captured it right there, the crux of the issue, the true appeal of Facebook:
Facebook on the other hand lets you do that without getting too personal or intimate.
Those things so many people are afraid of? Not because they are legitimately feared, but because most of them come from broken homes and a divorce culture and have some deep-seated trust issues and insecurities? Programming, in other words. You see this as a feature?
We could collectively face our fears and learn how to interact with people on personal and intimate levels. What we'd discover is that dealing with others as actual human beings is far more satisfying, far less distant and hollow. Doing this requires being vulnerable and having good judgment, two things that scare so many.
Or we can just make all human interaction as indirect and superficial as possible so nothing ever improves. What we'd discover is that we are so busy and have so much to keep up with yet actual acceptance and real understanding is so hard to find. Does that sound familiar? Doing this requires being shallow and mindlessly leaping on the current bandwagon because that's what everybody else is doing, nice and impersonal, focus on the crowd.
You get to decide this on the individual level. So it's truly your call. Though, if people become any more alienated from one another, we may as well start addressing them with numbers instead of names. Who else can see this as a problem?
There's all sorts of electric bi-wheelers for sales in China. Take your pick. From the most simple bike with a battery, to the most heavy scooter with double battery and long range. This really should become a best-seller everywhere, because IT IS very efficient, cheap, and clean. You can search counter-arguments if you want, but I wont change my mind on that, I saw how much it is so popular in China, and how convenient it is, as I own one myself. There's absolutely no reason why policy makers wouldn't push for it in the west, yet it's not happening.
That's how politics works. Politicians gain surprisingly little from actually solving a problem, especially if the problem is unlikely to resurface.
They gain a bit if the problem can be perpetuated in a steady state. Then they always have something to use as an "issue" in a campaign.
They really hit the jackpot if it can suddenly escalate into a crisis, no matter how preventable and foreseeable that crisis was. This is how most power grabs take place. The urgency and fear surrounding a good crisis tends to shut down most lines of scrutiny.
A high barrier to entry isn't a monopoly. Even with the high barrier, I have three competing choices for bandwidth where I am--cable, phone, and Dish.
Besides which, your very post implicitly agrees that they are inherently monopolies. If you are dissatisfied with your cable carrier you have to use an entirely different form of access in order to do business with a competitor. You do not have a dozen cable companies from which to choose, who can all deliver service to your doorstep. Same deal with the phone lines. You have to go outside of their market entirely to find a competitor. If that isn't a monopoly do tell me what is.
That argument won't work with me or with any thinking individual. It's the position of mindless adherence to an orthodoxy that you did not even create.
Utter horseshit. They are not state-funded and state-granted monopolies.
A high barrier to entry isn't a monopoly. Even with the high barrier, I have three competing choices for bandwidth where I am--cable, phone, and Dish.
How would you like to have the following three non-competing choices: Dish, Dish, and Dish? That's what you would have if the state had not made the initial investment to provide the (incredibly expensive) infrastructure on which phone and cable systems depend.
They owe you NOTHING.
They owe us nothing? So then they are so privileged, that the cable and phone companies can just say "hey, thanks for bearing that really heavy initial investment to get this thing off the ground. Oh, thank you too for handing us this infrastructure and handing us a local monopoly. I am sure both of those things will profit us handsomely. Well, guess we have a clean slate now after your very generous free gifts. No we aren't going to do anything for you in return."
That's what you want? How about you take a whole five minutes and look up precisely how those cable and phone lines got to your doorstep. You don't seem like the sort to readily admit when you're dead wrong about something, so you can retreat into the silence of no-reply after you educate yourself. I'll understand.
It's an incredible phenomenon to witness, the way people will actively and passionately advocate for what is so clearly not in their own interests. Coincidentally, they typically use a bitchy tone as you just did, to show their annoyance that anyone would actually disagree. It makes you uncomfortable, I know, when someone doesn't give immediate support to your articles of faith. How dare they! Right? These are largely unspoken impulses but it comes out in the way you respond to me.
You just can't seem to connect the dots to understand whose interests your position there does serve. Great, another soft malleable vulnerable mind with the conceit to believe that the exterior influences and ideas with which it has become infested are actually its own, that the home they have made within you is somehow legitimate. It's about as legitimate as the home that cockroaches or rats make within a dwelling.
To realize just how many of your ideas and beliefs are not your own would probably be more of a shock than you could handle. People have complete nervous breakdowns over less profound things. Should you get through that intact, you'd endure a personal crisis of not knowing anything with any certainty whatsoever, which you'd eventually resolve by undertaking a quest to discover who and what you really are and what is truly a solid foundation for belief. So far as these things go, the fact that people will embrace and defend the very dominators who are screwing them over is basic, bottom-of-the-class material. It's called having no real principles, no real self-hood. It's the main reason why the new boss is the same as the old boss.
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Because the first black president wants to be known as the guy who legalized pot?
If he wants any real respect, then yes. Politicians worthy of real respect can admit when something has failed and are willing to stop doing that failed thing and start doing something else.
I don't really see what his race has to do with it. It doesn't change the fact that marijuana prohibition was a bad idea.
Clearly Facebook is afraid to compete on the merits of its services. Isn't that the message whenever any sort of vendorlock is implemented?
I never before took Google's social network very seriously. Now that Facebook is showing fear of them, and acting so childish about it, I'm willing to reconsider that. To anyone with some sense, Facebook is providing a more stunning endorsement of Google's services than Google itself could have ever created.
Believe me, you aren't missing anything worthwhile. There's only so many different ways a singer can whine about their inability to mature into an adult person with the self-knowledge to confidently select a life partner who's actually good for them to be with, and then invest the effort and patience it takes to form a healthy relationship. Apparently that's a complex and endlessly interesting subject for many. It's far from being inspiring or edifying or enlightening. You could hold your nose and call it "art" but you degrade the term by doing it.
It might not be sarcasm to suggest ritual purification after having one's ears tarnished with it.
If we valued EQ half as much as IQ we'd have a much better world.
That is "lowest common denominator".
Just because it's "lowest" doesn't necessarily mean it's particularly "low", just that going any "higher" destroys the commonality. If you're talking about widespread common ground among millions of different people, then you're talking about lowest common denominator.
1. Decide that a term I used bothers you.
2. Miss the point being made.
3. Find a way to insert your offense at my term into the conversation.
4. Uh, profit?
Ever listen to much recent popular music? It's at around an 8th grade emotional level, usually about a failed relationship. That puts the low in lowest common denominator. I'm sorry if the correct way of naming things offends you.
This isn't like taking a survey of 5 million men and asking if they enjoy getting hit in the testicles. There will be an extremely common answer to that question. It's not a low common denominator because not getting hit in the testicles really is the superior choice when compared to getting hit in the testicles. This should be easy to understand.
Now then. Music is about art, expression, and personal taste and ability to appreciate. In other words, it's a very individual thing. The superior choice is what suits your tastes after you get to know yourself well enough to have explored and refined your tastes and preferences. What is the superior choice for you may not be the superior choice for me. You aren't going to get 5 million people to all agree on something unless you severely dumb down the available choices. Then you can get something approaching the either-or scenario of whether or not to get hit in the testicles. But to do that, you first have to take the incredible diversity and brilliant variety of real art and human expression available and reduce it to a few formulaic choices. This can be called lowering the available choices. It puts the low in lowest common denominator.
It doesn't get much easier to understand than this. Even if you still don't like it. Either tell me why my reasoning is unsound and be prepared to demonstrate why, or find some other agenda in need of an apologist and go defend that.
Yes, it's lowest common denominator. There's no way you could have widespread common ground among millions of different people, for something as hugely diverse and personal as individual taste in music, without recourse to the lowest common denominator. It's a race to the bottom of sophistication and variety in order to superficially appeal to the largest number of people possible, increasing sales.
Sometimes I call it assembly-line music. It's a rejection of the idea that music is about art and expression, that it has a message with meaning, because as soon as you recognize that you must also recognize that not all people want a particular message or appreciate a given meaning. To the execs this would mean reducing their target audience. It would mean lower sales. It is in their interests to view it not as art, but as a mass-produced product. They see it this way and it shows.
Making it as formulaic and cookie-cutter as possible just means they have a repeatable business process that yields a relatively predictable result. Every car manufacturer or chip fabrication plant wants the same thing. It's the rationale behind interchangable parts. The difference, of course, is that in manufacturing having consistent processes and relatively identical parts is an advantage to the customer; in music it's an advantage to the distributor.
Refined individual taste and a desire for uniqueness are the adversaries of this system. Those traits would mean the companies would have to do a lot more work to enjoy the same level of sales. They'd actually have to take a risk once in a while.
Really the only new development is that the Internet is challenging the record companies' position as undisputed gatekeeper. It is now much easier to learn about music that doesn't have a large marketing budget to promote it. At some point more people may decide that relying on a monied interest to promote something to you is bass-ackwards, that the industry actually exists to provide what you demand, that it'll start looking that way once individuals become easier to find.
You'd have to be mentally defective to steal at an airport. They're the most tightly secured and monitored civilian areas.
No, you just have to think you're above the law. That the cop was wrong about this is the exception and not the rule.
The norm is that cops who break the law, including those who engage in unprovoked violence against innocent civilians, receive a paid vacation known as admistrative suspension.
No surprise. Cops are people too, with all the usual failings.
At least this bad cop was arrested instead of "protecting their own", but let's see how he is prosecuted.
The fact that they are actually applying the law equally and not regarding the cop as above the law is the surprise.
If only they'd prosecute police brutality, corruption, and intimidation (particularly of anyone with a camera) with such fervency. Then they might stop looking so much like the thugs they're supposed to protect us from.
If that sounds too categorical, that's for a well-founded reason. The cops who don't abuse power themselves but keep silent when their co-workers do the same are equally guilty. They sometimes call it "the blue wall of silence". I call it the blue wall of cowardice. It is most unbecoming of such otherwise brave people.
For which reason driving while intoxicated (on anything, not just alcohol) is against the law. That's reasonable because it punishes irresponsible behavior while leaving responsible drinkers alone.
It is much easier to determine a person's level of intoxication and impairment from alcohol than from weed.
If there was a simple, accurate breathalyzer-style test for "too high to drive," I'd be much more supportive of legalizing marijuana. That and the fact that actual impairment of mental faculties from weed last longer than the high does - you could be sober, yet still somewhat impaired from marijuana. With alcohol, impairment pretty closely corresponds to concentration in the body.
And we're back around, full-circle, to the key point that so many are failing to appreciate. People who want to smoke weed are already doing it. People who drive while high are already doing it. That's because the War on Drugs is a total failure in terms of its stated goals. Right now there are DUI charges filed against drivers who were on marijuana while driving. We already have this problem. We already have ways of dealing with it. That's the reality.
The only meaningful difference is whether there might be an accompanying possession charge, or whether we want to only issue criminal charges against people who are actually endangering others. That's all there is.
You arrived at that conclusion on your own and have chosen to act accordingly. All other people want is the opportunity to do the same. There is a big difference between reasonable laws that protect others from the negligence and irresponsibility of others, versus legislating morality.
For which reason driving while intoxicated (on anything, not just alcohol) is against the law. That's reasonable because it punishes irresponsible behavior while leaving responsible drinkers alone.
Freedom is not and has never been free. There will always be members of society who do not accept the responsibility that comes with freedom and they must be dealt with. Unlike legislating morality, this a legitimate use of the law enforcement power of government. It's precisely what law enforcement and the court systems are for.
You can try banning alcohol, again, but that didn't stop people from drinking. You can keep trying to ban drugs, some more, but it isn't restricting access to drugs. These are facts, and as facts, they don't particularly care how you feel about them. Perhaps we can all agree that laws which ignore facts belong in books of fiction, not our books of law.
Driving can be dangerous. So can power tools. Do we respond to this by banning automobiles and power tools? No. Instead, we educate, we demonstrate and encourage responsible use. We communicate that there is the expectation they be done correctly. We are clear about the fact that responsible use is a matter of decision and priority.
I fully agree that they should be punished. However, they should be punished for starting a fire and causing losses to others, not for doing drugs. Plenty of people drink and do drugs without burning the place down. Likewise, plenty of sober people do something stupid and cause fires, both in buildings and in forests. When they do, we punish them for having started a fire, not for being distracted by something less important.
We sure do. But we wait until they actually harm someone before we punish them and that's critical. Or we wait until they show actual evidence of criminal insanity, or actual evidence of being physically unable to handle the demands of driving a car. We don't yet punish people for thought crimes. We should not continue to punish people for state-of-consciousness crimes. Only for how they handle it and what results they allow.
Obama's simply too conservative to sign a bill like this. He should, but he won't. The fact that marijuana is 100% safe isn't enough to sway the screaming, mindless Christians, and Obama needs at least some of their votes.
Take a hard honest look at the world and you'll find that those who wish to control others come in all stripes and operate under all banners. Every person who ever gets offended at anything and responds not by no longer watching/viewing/reading/listening to that thing, but by seeking to have it banned, is also part of the problem. Every person who thinks they know what is best for you and that their recommendations for how you live should have the force of law behind them are also part of the problem.
Anyone who would ever tell consenting adults what they may do with their bodies, in the privacy of their homes, with their money, or what they may read, watch, and think is quite plainly an abomination. So long as force or fraud is not used to harm an unwilling participant, we are and should be free to live our lives as we see fit and then bear the consequences.
If some Christians were the only ones who failed to understand that, it would be a drastic improvement. You have to get over your religious bigotry if you are to actually understand the scope of the problem. No, I'm not offended by it -- why would I bother handling it in such an immature and cowardly fashion when I can meet it head-on and explain exactly what is wrong with it, secure that my reason is sound? I have no reason to get offended and look for a way to punish you for engaging in this kind of bigotry. The fact that you will never understand the nature of the problem until you get over that means you're doing a great job of punishing yourself.
Wallowing in the darkness of ignorance and feeling powerless to effect any meaningful change is worse than anything I would hypothetically do to you (emphasis on hypothetically, just to be clear). That's something the childish people who scream about how offended they are will never understand: the built-in justice of being harmed or edified not for what you do, but by it. They haven't the understanding or the dispassion. They're too busy serving an impulse to control that will never be satisfied.
How are you going to teach people how to say no to that kind of criminal? We have spent a couple of decades scaring people with 'you must protect your computer, if you don't protect it you are an idiot, etc'. All that 'teaching' is what directly lead to this scam. So what do you propose teaching? That your computer will never pop up a warning saying an infection was found, and click to do something about it? Many (all?) legit virus scanners do exactly that. Never purchase something just because your computer said to? What happens when your AV subscription is up and you get prompted for exactly that (with the same dire 'you could be exposed' messages that the scams use?
You would teach them that there is no substitute for an actual understanding of the systems you are using and how they work. With computers and networks, enough basic competence to stop the majority of these scams is much more achievable than true expertise. It would be difficult, but unlike apprehending every last malicious person on the planet, it could be done. We routinely spend more resources than it would require on far less worthy things. It would begin with the realization that there is something wrong with using a system for years without ever knowing much more about it than when you began.
The biggest obstacle is the pity-driven, well-meaning but thoroughly misguided mentality of validating and legitimizing the ignorance that exists. It takes many forms. A common one is the fallacy of the excluded middle, wherein you are either a total expert or a complete newbie with no degree of competence in-between. Another common one is the unstated, implicit notion that there is anything normal or natural about the failure to slowly acquire knowledge over time with experience (leading to what I call the "permanent newbie"). Yet another is the idea that a literate person with 'Net access ever needs to wait around for someone else to educate them.
Sometimes the easy way is to go ahead and do it the hard way. Your alternative is to try multiple "easy ways", have all of them fail miserably, and then fall back to doing it the hard way. The only people benefitting from the status quo are law enforcement agencies and those with investments in the cottage industry of all the security "solutions" designed to protect users from themselves.
Self-directed education can be a joyful process of discovery powered by curiosity and a desire for independence. I know that doesn't suit the top-down bureaucracies involved in our school systems. It definitely doesn't suit the politicians and marketers who view independent thought and the initiative to not wait on strangers to hand you easy answers as obstacles in their path to power and gratification, but maybe, just maybe, the edification and advancement of the average person is more important than what they value. Maybe, just maybe the portrayal as normal of undisciplined immaturity that doesn't want to invest in the quality of its own experience, that denies the notion of getting out of something what one is willing to put into it, inevitably serves the interests of someone other than we the users.
Knowledge and understanding really is power. If you depend on anyone else to hand you those things, that person has power over you that they may abuse. If people realize that their literacy and access to information is all they need to educate themselves, if they realize the freedom represented by not being beholden to someone else to tell you what they think you need to know and how you should feel about and act on that knowledge, well, making criminals' jobs more difficult is one of the least significant benefits we would receive. It would be nothing short of a new Golden Age. It would change everything from the way people live their personal lives, to the kinds of businesses they run, to the kind of leaders they demand, to their views on what really matters in this life.
They are merely following the examples which are all around them. It's the "virus scanner" model instead of the "security system" model. The difference is a security system is all about proactive prevention, not after-the-fact damage control.
Damage control has its place, as a last resort. It should not be the focus of the effort though.
Mugging is a violent crime. Since it involves the use of force, it does not depend on the cooperation of the victim. I see the point you're trying to make here but it just isn't a valid comparison. Saying no to a mugger won't stop him from getting your wallet and is likely to provoke him.
These scammers are non-violent fraudsters. Without the active cooperation of their victims, they cannot do harm. The would-be victims can say "no thanks" and stop the crime cold. That's the difference between fraud and force, though both are evil.
All I am saying is: since people actually can say "no" to this kind of criminal, why aren't we teaching them how to? It's not an either-or proposition. We can send law enforcement after the criminals while also educating their targets. The fact that we don't equates to turning a blind eye to the underlying vulnerability.
I also wanted to add that you are providing a great example of how to have constructive discussion. This is the sort which edifies and elevates. Sadly it seems to be a lost art of sorts. That's why I am specifically pointing that out, not so much for you but for others who need examples to understand the difference.
Thank you for expanding on a worthy subject without making it degenerate into the "I'm right so you have to be wrong" polarity that's only really appropriate for undisputable facts. I'm appreciative but I am not complementing you. You complement yourself by handling it this way. It's not a matter of agreement or whether I see this exactly the way that you do. It's simply nice to converse with an actual adult.
To me this is all so simple. It is evident to me that all the controversy and conflict comes from the inability of many to look at something objectively without being a slave and bond-servant to their own tender sensibilities. Dispassionate evaluation without inserting yourself and your feelings into every little thing is clearly the superior way. Having feelings, even passionate ones, is good and well so long as you are their master; otherwise the proper order is reversed and they serve to foster ignorance. This ignorance is the very worst kind because the person cherishes it, will defend it, and will not part with it easily.
Let's take someone like Thomas Jefferson. In many ways he was a true individual. His love of freedom and his willingness to take great personal risk to advance it is nothing less than heroic. But he owned slaves and probably compelled sexual favors the female slaves who were definitely not in a position to refuse.
To me this is so simple. His willingness to own slaves is the sense in which he was not ahead of his time, did not have the capacity to independently evaluate the morality of the situation, was merely a product of his culture. He was not a perfect free-thinking individual. The fact that he was an exceptionally great man in so many other ways does not contradict this. What free thought he had was put to excellent use. What free thought he lacked blemished his memory.
You see this in politics even today. It's like we want people to be perfect saints who are absolutely blameless in every conceivable way. Such people generally do not exist. We keep getting disappointed about the fact that evil is everywhere, even within great men. It's as though this is a big surprise, as though there aren't many repetitive examples. This is called denial. If you love virtue and truth, stop worrying about people and things you cannot control. Work on yourself and stop depending on some messianic paragon of all virtue to show you the way. Even if there were such a leader today, making yourself a behavioral clone of him robs you of any true appreciation. That kind of change does not come from follow-the-leader, not even with the best possible leaders. It comes from the inside and moves outwards.
Hitler was amazingly popular in the USA until the extent of his evil was better known. His talk of eugenics appealed to the "Social Darwinism" mentality of the old-money families. Wilson wasn't the only one who celebrated him. Henry Ford and many other businessmen thought he was jus
...Echelon has more clock cycles available.
LMAO. That deserves some mod points but sadly the overlords at slashdot haven't consented to grace me with some in a while. I have excellent Karma so go figure.
I once asked Rob Malda about this and he was kind enough to explain it to me. It depends on a variety of things like how often you post; too much or too little and you don't get mod points so often. How new or old your account is also has a bearing on it. There's probably more to it than he explained to me but suffice to say it's not as simple as maintaining good karma. For example, some users get 15 mod points at a time while I have personally only received five at a time though I get them relatively frequently.
Back on topic, I have a mixed take on this. While I'm glad to see a legitimate use of police power to take down those who serve no purpose other than preying on others for their selfish gain, I don't see how this will fix the real problem. It seems like for each group they bust, a few more rise up to take its place. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if they look at how and why this group got caught and try to avoid making the same mistakes so they can stand a better chance of getting away with it.
This has a social engineering aspect but otherwise follows all of the same principles of computer security. It is not practical to apprehend every offender and prevent every new offender from rising up to cause more damage. It simply cannot be done. What is difficult, but possible, is to harden the targets, to increase the cost of compromise. For social engineering and other forms of deceit, that requires that we value, encourage, and cultivate knowledge and critical thinking. For so long as there are many vulnerable people who continue to fall for these schemes, and thereby enrich and reward the predators with the money they seek, you will never truly solve this problem.
It's not a matter of fairness or who deserves what. It's a matter of actually understanding the problem. It is true that stepping on a poisonous snake does not really injure the snake; it is likewise true that death by snake venom is too high a punishment for such an act, that the punishment grossly exceeds the crime. You can try explaining that to the snake only to find that it cannot be reasoned with. Yet if you know you are marching through an area with a high population of such snakes, the wise wear protective boots. If you know the Internet is a hostile network with criminals eager to defraud you, the wise maintain an awareness of such, perhaps do a little study of security best practices, and are glad that the price of protecting themselves is so low.
Ah this old argument. Man. It's so easily shot down, it's a miracle it still persists. But okay, I'll indulge you.
So there is no absolute truth, right? Are you absolutely certain? You see, it defeats itself trivially and is therefore worthy of no more attention.
Not only should we compare history to our standards, it's one of the most important functions of history. Stop making this all about personal attacks (against those who hated Turing) and look at the big picture. What have we learned, if anything, from past injustices? Are we truly more advanced than those who came before us, or are we decaying into our own brand of decadence, our own ready excuses for mistreating and abusing others? Are we just "making nice" to cover that up with outward behavior? At the same time we see how wrong our ancestors were, do we have our own wrongs we prefer to deny? These are worthy questions. Your relativism would sweep them under the rug.
It's fucking shameful that history is taught in our schools in terms of "ok, memorize that so-and-so won X War on Date Y". It completely trivializes what could be understood from it.
People seem to forget that in the 60s and early 70s, the US had a great many liberal political terrorists within its borders, who committed more bombings in the early 70s, in Washington DC alone, than all the "right-wing" terrorists since, combined.
Does that mean that the right-wing terrorists are morally justified then in blowing up civilians as well, just because the liberals did it two generations ago? Huh, I missed that memo. I guess the victims of Atlanta and Oklahoma City, and their families can rest assured now that that their deaths were a necessity in order to balance out the moral inequity between the two ends of the US political spectrum.
Maybe the point was that all sorts of different people have engaged in this sort of behavior, that any sense of security gained from adherence to a stereotype is false, that a clear notion of what terrorism is and isn't is crucial to understanding it. Maybe the point was that certain "big scaries" are in vogue at certain times. In a previous time it was communism, now it's terrorism. Maybe political ideologies aren't the problem and the actual problem is the idiocy of using violence to force them on the unwilling.
You're basing your comment on the more hostile and coincidentally petty interpretation of that post. Other interpretations are available to you. Other interpretations better reflect what was plainly stated. I get that the "us against them" aspect of American politics is irritating and tremendously distracting. If you aren't careful, you're going to fixate on it exclusively.
3-4 short paragraphs is awfully long? Heh. Not much of a reader, then?
And it's not because of Facebook. Facebook is supplying what a market is demanding. I refer to the origin of that demand. In that sense you are right, it's nothing to do (directly) with Facebook. Facebook is the effect of a cause. It is not the cause. I'm not sure how you could have interpreted me in any other way, since all the other ways to interpret me are trivially shown to be invalid (course, instead of assuming I am a thinking being, you might need me to be wrong...).
In my case, I already have real human interaction with my friends and relatives. Actual face-to-face quality time.
The only use I'd have for Facebook would be to have superficial contact with people I don't spend actual quality time with. I don't find that desirable in the slightest. It would be like taking one of the finer things in life, making a standardized package for it, and trivializing the hell out of it. But then, I'm not really a member of this culture; I just happen to be in it. I have long overcome its fears of actual contact by realizing they are not in my interests.
If you really cannot understand the psychological impact a culture of divorce and bastard children and media manipulation and alienation has had on the last few generations, the way they have few or no models for healthy relationships and how this is spilling over even into friendships and business relationships, how being superficial is now considered cool, and why that might create an environment conducive to things like Facebook, just tell me you don't know what I am talking about and leave it at that.
It is, after all, hard to have a discussion about electrons with people who strongly believe electrons don't exist because they have never seen them.
You must admit, as a theory it does explain the world in which we live...
Don’t friend them.
You've never ran into the "friend of a friend guilt" trip, I see.
I have many friends on Facebook from back when I was a punk kid. A good portion of them grew up into decent adults, but a proportion of them are developmentally atrophied at 16-21. I have no problem being friends with the ones that grew up, but try to avoid the other group like the plague. Sadly many of the latter group have finally discovered computers and smart phones.
Now every time I go to a party or generally hang out with my old friends I get to spend an hour of people chastising me for not being friends with so-and-so (who happens to be in their mid-30s hanging out with 18 year old kids in back alleys doing drugs). I've had five people all gang up on me, trying to convince me of the merits of "friending" people who'd I rather never think of again. It gets worse when these people show up places, since then I have to listen to them guilt trip me as well.
If often comes to the point where I might as well "friend" them, since it saves me hassle and stress in the long run. I suppose it doesn't matter, since I only actually check Facebook once a month or so (if even) when I have absolutely nothing better to do. Its not like my feed is full of any important information or communications to begin with, just minor burbles and desperate pleas for attention.
If you're a pushover, the wrong kind of people will exploit that for their own selfish reasons. If you need to have the approval of people, the wrong kind of people will exploit that for their own selfish purposes.
This is older than history. Facebook hasn't changed that. Facebook hasn't brought it about.
You actually captured it right there, the crux of the issue, the true appeal of Facebook:
Those things so many people are afraid of? Not because they are legitimately feared, but because most of them come from broken homes and a divorce culture and have some deep-seated trust issues and insecurities? Programming, in other words. You see this as a feature?
We could collectively face our fears and learn how to interact with people on personal and intimate levels. What we'd discover is that dealing with others as actual human beings is far more satisfying, far less distant and hollow. Doing this requires being vulnerable and having good judgment, two things that scare so many.
Or we can just make all human interaction as indirect and superficial as possible so nothing ever improves. What we'd discover is that we are so busy and have so much to keep up with yet actual acceptance and real understanding is so hard to find. Does that sound familiar? Doing this requires being shallow and mindlessly leaping on the current bandwagon because that's what everybody else is doing, nice and impersonal, focus on the crowd.
You get to decide this on the individual level. So it's truly your call. Though, if people become any more alienated from one another, we may as well start addressing them with numbers instead of names. Who else can see this as a problem?
There's all sorts of electric bi-wheelers for sales in China. Take your pick. From the most simple bike with a battery, to the most heavy scooter with double battery and long range. This really should become a best-seller everywhere, because IT IS very efficient, cheap, and clean. You can search counter-arguments if you want, but I wont change my mind on that, I saw how much it is so popular in China, and how convenient it is, as I own one myself. There's absolutely no reason why policy makers wouldn't push for it in the west, yet it's not happening.
That's how politics works. Politicians gain surprisingly little from actually solving a problem, especially if the problem is unlikely to resurface.
They gain a bit if the problem can be perpetuated in a steady state. Then they always have something to use as an "issue" in a campaign.
They really hit the jackpot if it can suddenly escalate into a crisis, no matter how preventable and foreseeable that crisis was. This is how most power grabs take place. The urgency and fear surrounding a good crisis tends to shut down most lines of scrutiny.
Besides which, your very post implicitly agrees that they are inherently monopolies. If you are dissatisfied with your cable carrier you have to use an entirely different form of access in order to do business with a competitor. You do not have a dozen cable companies from which to choose, who can all deliver service to your doorstep. Same deal with the phone lines. You have to go outside of their market entirely to find a competitor. If that isn't a monopoly do tell me what is.
That argument won't work with me or with any thinking individual. It's the position of mindless adherence to an orthodoxy that you did not even create.
How would you like to have the following three non-competing choices: Dish, Dish, and Dish? That's what you would have if the state had not made the initial investment to provide the (incredibly expensive) infrastructure on which phone and cable systems depend.
They owe us nothing? So then they are so privileged, that the cable and phone companies can just say "hey, thanks for bearing that really heavy initial investment to get this thing off the ground. Oh, thank you too for handing us this infrastructure and handing us a local monopoly. I am sure both of those things will profit us handsomely. Well, guess we have a clean slate now after your very generous free gifts. No we aren't going to do anything for you in return."
That's what you want? How about you take a whole five minutes and look up precisely how those cable and phone lines got to your doorstep. You don't seem like the sort to readily admit when you're dead wrong about something, so you can retreat into the silence of no-reply after you educate yourself. I'll understand.
It's an incredible phenomenon to witness, the way people will actively and passionately advocate for what is so clearly not in their own interests. Coincidentally, they typically use a bitchy tone as you just did, to show their annoyance that anyone would actually disagree. It makes you uncomfortable, I know, when someone doesn't give immediate support to your articles of faith. How dare they! Right? These are largely unspoken impulses but it comes out in the way you respond to me.
You just can't seem to connect the dots to understand whose interests your position there does serve. Great, another soft malleable vulnerable mind with the conceit to believe that the exterior influences and ideas with which it has become infested are actually its own, that the home they have made within you is somehow legitimate. It's about as legitimate as the home that cockroaches or rats make within a dwelling.
To realize just how many of your ideas and beliefs are not your own would probably be more of a shock than you could handle. People have complete nervous breakdowns over less profound things. Should you get through that intact, you'd endure a personal crisis of not knowing anything with any certainty whatsoever, which you'd eventually resolve by undertaking a quest to discover who and what you really are and what is truly a solid foundation for belief. So far as these things go, the fact that people will embrace and defend the very dominators who are screwing them over is basic, bottom-of-the-class material. It's called having no real principles, no real self-hood. It's the main reason why the new boss is the same as the old boss.