I am against general legalization of marijuana though I concede it's benefits to some. [... ] However, I am against nanny state laws
Telling an adult that he/she may not put marijuana into his/her own body is an excellent example of a nanny-state law. It just screams "we know what's good for you".
The whole "war on (some) drugs" is one of the most excellent examples of failed public policy available anywhere. Particularly noteworthy is the strong, irrational desire to continue doing it even though we've known for a long time that it isn't actually preventing anyone from obtaining drugs and that it provides a great source of funding for organized crime. The desire to continue the "war on (some) drugs" is obviously not based on any measurement of whether any of its stated goals have been achieved and that's what makes it so interesting. A psychologist could have a field day with one of its more ardent supporters.
The press' job is to sell advertising space. Controversial topics that are inconvenient to rich people are not welcome in this world.
Right, that's why the old standby of "gays in the military" is suddenly an issue again. They pull that one out whenever the American people start getting tired of the latest pointless war. Oddly I haven't seen them mention "flag burning" in a long while. That's another favorite they like to play up when a distraction is needed. Maybe "flag burning" has outlived its usefulness and stem-cell controversies have replaced it.
The pattern is obvious once you consider that we have much bigger problems we should be focusing on. Gay people in the military is a complete non-issue in the face of things like whether our nation is long-term sustainable.
It's shocking to me that it took the press nearly 6 years to get interested in why President Bush was keeping so many secrets when it's really their job to ask those sorts of questions.
Why yes... in fact, it's almost as though both government AND media have a lot of the same interests and agendas in common, are very friendly with each other, and feel it is in their mutual interests not to rock each other's boats too much. But if you took a moment to consider that, why, you'd be a conspiracy nutter like the ones they always show on the media...
You know, I've never seen that claim used to back up a rational position. Maybe that has happened somewhere out there, but I've never once seen it. The primary use of loaded words like "patriotism" is to create emotional fervor that shuts down things like dispassionate inquiry and critical thinking.
Therefore, the people who use "patriotism" in the media don't have the same definition of it that I do. My own preference is for that definition that "a patriot supports his country always and his government only when it deserves it." While I can still see sensible decisions being made on the local and state levels, my federal government hasn't deserved my support for a very long time.
and being a tool by shouting on previous threads here that Wikileaks had got people killed in Afghanistan
If we were so concerned about people getting killed, then we wouldn't invade a sovereign nation and destroy their government because they asked for evidence that bin Laden was involved in 9/11 in response to our extradition request. So clearly, saving lives is not our priority here. It follows that if the government is pissed off about their secrets being leaked it's not because someone might get killed. It's because it makes them lose face and especially because the utter lack of negative consequences reveals that the reason for having those secrets was invalid to begin with.
Writing a hundred times: "I will not watch FOX anymore" should do it.
FOX didn't cause Americans to become a mindless, fat, stupid, herd-mentality, emotionally driven, reactive, childish, flavor-of-the-week, decadent people who hate critical thinking and believe whatever the TV tells them like good little citizens. FOX merely capitalizes on it. They'd risk bankruptcy if they didn't tailor their programming for bovine America.
My reasoning here is sound. If I have committed a logical fallacy or other error in my reasoning, you'd do me a favor by pointing it out. If you can't do that, personal attacks will neither add to nor subtract from one thing I've said.
Your logical fallacy is assuming that I was attacking you in the first place.
I call things what they are - your attitude about the uselessness of facebook is snooty, judgmental and totally dismissive of the value that half a billion people have found in it. Your entire argument about a pattern of red flags was predicated on the assumption that you were being attacked with no rational basis - I showed you the reason -- a reason you have reinforced with your response -- you just can't accept it because you are at least as colored by irrationality as the people you criticize.
Actually you judged me because you didn't like the basis of my reasoning. If I thought that those with the particular weakness of vanity were inferior to me (and my own particular weaknesses) then I'd have to concede that you were right and I was indeed "snooty". However, that isn't the case.
You decided to assume that I cannot call something "vanity" without viewing myself as superior to it. That is something you cannot know but can only assume. When you assume that at all, and then decide to go with the more negative assumption that is available, you are conducting a personal attack whether or not you realize it. Whether you can appreciate the irony/hypocrisy of judging me while accusing me of judging others is not my concern.
You're also trying to assert something about me personally and put me into the position of proving a negative. That's clever, but the burden of proof is on the accuser and in this case, that's you. It is your problem. As for me, my preference would have been to stick to the facts and reasoning and talk about Facebook instead of talking about each other.
Here's the part you seem to be missing: if Facebook users universally praised me and thought I was the greatest guy ever, it wouldn't change my perception of why they use Facebook. To say that my argument was "predicated on the assumption that [I was] being attacked with no rational basis" is to assume I am petty enough to regard something as true or false based on whether people like to hear it. No, I think Facebook appeals to the vanity in people whether or not someone gets irrationally offended at me for pointing that out.
It just so happens that some of them do get irrationally offended and it doesn't take a genius to understand why they might. But to fixate on that and then make this personally about me is to completely miss my point. Additionally it's terrible form. Most of my interactions with you have been of much higher quality than this.
The truth is, saying that Facebook appeals to a sort of vanity (or egotism if you like) is like saying that Budweiser appeals to people who want to drink. The difference is that the drinker will say "well yeah, that's why I didn't buy non-alcoholic beer" while the Facebook user is likely to get upset.
Perhaps the reason you caught flak was really for such a snooty attitude.
I call things what they are. If that doesn't please you, you'll just have to be unpleased. You can pretend to know something as complex as my attitude without knowing anything about me personally if that makes you feel justified in your displeasure. That too is a form of vanity, and would handily explain why two lines out of my multi-paragraph post seem to have struck a nerve of yours.
Moving on past your attempt to make a discussion about Facebook into a personal matter, I'll respond to your reasoning.
While narcissism may be a motivator for some users of facebook, it can hardly be said that vanity is the draw. The ability to easily connect (and reconnect) with friends present and past is quite valuable to most regular people.
Pictures of yourself at a drunken party are not necessary to let your friends find you. Neither are posts about the minutia of day-to-day life. Nor are pictures and writings that put yourself in a compromising position. Yet how many "news" stories keep appearing about people who suffer in some way for posting these things? You can find "news" about everything from employers who deny jobs to robbers who break into houses based on information someone willingly posted to Facebook.
The price may be too high and too hidden, but that doesn't make the value provided any less meaningless.
If it's hidden, it is not hidden very well. How hard is it to understand that posting personal information to the very most public of places, the global Internet, might have negative repercussions? Not very. After the very first news story about someone who irresponsibly posted personal information and suffered for it, why do such large numbers of people continue to repeat their mistakes? Are they learning-disabled? Possibly, but the sheer numbers of them make another explanation more likely.
It so happens that there is a more likely explanation that fits the facts. Any rational evaluation that the most average of persons is capable of performing would lead to two very easy conclusions: a) the Internet is an extremely public place that is very good at retaining information and b) if you repeat the mistakes of others you can expect to suffer the same fate that they did. It doesn't get much simpler than that. So how do large numbers of people keep failing the simplest of rational decision-making exercises? That's easy. They are not using rational thought processes because they are motivated by something that is not rational. That irrational "something" is easily identified: vanity.
Perhaps you don't like that. To tell you the truth, I'm not precisely thrilled about it myself. Yet the situation didn't ask for my approval before it happened, and I suspect it didn't require yours either. As I explained, I call things what they are. My reasoning here is sound. If I have committed a logical fallacy or other error in my reasoning, you'd do me a favor by pointing it out. If you can't do that, personal attacks will neither add to nor subtract from one thing I've said.
I really am regretting ever creating a Facebook account. If things carry on in this direction, I shall delete the thing soon.
Those of us who found serious problems (mainly privacy-related) with Facebook from the very beginning, decided not to participate at all, and said so, tended to catch some flak for it. As in, something other than a well-reasoned rebuttal to the position. Usually this was in the form of someone's personal offense that I would point out a flaw in their favorite new service, or that I would steadfastly value the privacy they seem to have given up on.
"If things carry on in this direction" indeed. I think this is like many political proposals. People tend to look at short-term effects without considering that these represent movement in a particular direction. The path that the momentum is taking can be identified early on and the destination can be known long before the end of that path is reached. It is something of a law of nature that events tend to unfold, to evolve, to become more so, to continue along their current direction in a straight line unless some counter-force alters that path. The longer something goes on the more inertia it accumulates; the more inertia it has the greater that counter-force (or backlash) must be to have any effect.
I for one identified early on that Facebook and similar sites appeal to a form of vanity I do not personally possess. Even if I did find that tempting, vanity is not a rational reason to participate in something. They do this while coming with disadvantages I find unacceptable, such as the loss of control over any personal information posted there (read their privacy policies, they make this quite clear) and the extensive use of personal information for tracking and marketing purposes. As another poster has pointed out in reply to you, you have no real assurance that your account is ever truly deleted even after going through a needlessly complex process to request that this be done.
The pattern here is a valuable one to recognize and simplicity itself. When many proponents of something display that kind of denigrating personal offense when you question the purpose or usefulness of that thing, and resent that you question it rationally at all, it should be a red flag. I've rarely or never seen anyone do that when the object in question is an inherently good or useful thing that can stand on its own merits. The regret you express can be described as a lesson about popularity, trend, and bandwagon appeal and the unwarranted power these can have over your decision-making. To be sure, it is a valuable one.
"... because they are not YET as vulnerable as Windows machines.
The fact that you would make such a ridiculous statement shows that you literally lack even the most basic understanding of Operating Systems and computer security.
Sometimes even an understanding of OSes and computer security isn't enough to override that annoying "all viewpoints are equally valid" undercurrent that corrupts many otherwise good-natured discussions about the whole "Linux/OSX vs Windows" topic. If the person in question were disinclined to be swayed by this unstated undercurrent, then the fact that Windows requires so much third-party software just to begin to achieve basic security would be a huge tip-off.
Not only that, I was just reading a story at Ars about how Jon Landau believes everything should be 3D. He calls out studios on hasty 3D conversions. I'd say the pot is calling the kettle black. His film had plenty of problems.
"Converting a movie from 2D to 3D is not a technical process. It is a creative process,"
You know what? After watching your flick at IMAX in 3D and halfway through wanting to leave with my headache, you're doing it wrong. As has been brought up before in previous Slashdot discussions, you can't get a proper 3D effect that will fool the brain with current technology. Stop trying to convert 2D films to 3D, especially for the point of being "OMG 3D" like parent mentioned.
The 3D effect worked decently well for me, better than I expected. There was one part of it that screwed with me though.
If I was looking more or less at the center of the screen, to the periphery it would appear (fairly convincingly) that certain objects were jutting out, past the boundary of the screen. Then I would sometimes attempt to follow those objects with my eyes and the illusion would continue... until my eyes reached the actual boundary of the screen. Then the entire image would suddenly collapse back into a 2D picture until I again was looking more directly at the screen.
The 3D was far better than I was expecting, which wasn't much. It's still nothing like a true hologram where you could walk all the way around it and see it from many different angles. I couldn't even remain in my seat and move my eyes very far around it without dispelling the illusion. The headaches are something I did not experience but have heard often. I think that could be remedied by becoming conscious of whether you are straining your eyes in order to force a certain perception, as a setup like that might tempt you to do.
It is allowing studios to hide really poorly written and acted scripts from kiddies that are more impressed with shiny 3d. It is now at the stage where if I see the movie is being advertised as being 3D I write it off as garbage without even bothering to see it now.
It does accomplish one useful thing. 3D and other experiences you currently can't get at home are the right way to fight piracy. I like that a damn sight better than taking old grandmas, dead people, and children to court. I also like it better than bribing politicians for increasingly draconian laws just to prop up an industry that refuses to learn how to deal with the information age. For that matter, it's better than ACTA and other secret treaties that threaten the integrity of our entire political process by occurring behind closed doors beyond public scrutiny.
In the fact of that, things that have always been around, like poorly written scripts covered up by some kind of visual effect, are downright benign.
It's pedantry when the masses who comment (including myself) comment on the meta-issues rather than on the actual achievements of this father and son.
The cause and effect of that is easy to establish. Had the editors produced an accurate headline/summary few (if any) of those comments would have been made. You can hack at the branches of this if you like but I prefer to call out its root.
If slashdot ever allows real article moderation (and not that firehose abortion)
Slashdot staff consists of the "editors". Real article moderation would make it more difficult for the "editors" to remain in denial that they are failures as editors. Therefore Slashdot staff are unlikely to implement real article moderation.
in addition to 'flamebait' and 'troll', can we have a '-1, pedant bait' article?
That'd just be another form of trolling.
I don't claim to have done anything interesting of late, but I also am not shitting on what others have done.
I'm not seeing much of that. As another person pointed out, most of those comments disputing the summary are about its accuracy. Nineteen miles is not space, that's just a fact. This balloon is an aircraft, not a spacecraft and that's just a fact. Basic facts like these that directly relate to the core of the story are exactly what an editor is supposed to get right. The Slashdot "editors" have failed miserably to do their jobs, yet again. That's the only thing anyone is shitting on and it's a worthy target for some fecal matter.
It's not really pedantry when you expect paid professionals (such as Slashdot "editors") to perform at least a mediocre job. If they finally achieve mediocrity it might even make sense to discuss whether it's reasonable to expect excellence.
Children do need to learn something about conformity since that is going to be important to them as adults in society, unless you think we can have a world full of unibombers and be OK.
So either blind conformity or homicidal maniac? Ever heard of the fallacy of the excluded middle? Or are you intentionally portraying all free-thinkers as crazy killers in order to discredit free thought?
The key point I think you're missing is simple: replace conformity with informed consent. The trick there is that informed consent requires something essential in order to function: it requires something that can be found reasonable enough that the informed would consent to it. The current school curriculum fails that criteria; it would not be an extreme statement to say that it hates reason in favor of submissive obedience.
The only trash I see is when someone like you comments about my post without reading the two links I provided. Those links, incidentally, would reveal to you why the points you raise are irrelevant. While it gave you a nice platform to make known your disdain of homeschooling (i.e. your attempt to interject opinion into a factual discussion) this too was irrelevant.
And you were modded up. Nice self-fulfilling prohecy.
We're seeing how money and markets can be transform a society into a society of serfs, any system can be gamed, transformed and abused, how so many people can't see this is disturbing.
How most people can't see this is quite a mystery unless you are willing to entertain the idea that people are not naturally this blind and must be trained to be this way. Then you realize this is the main reason for having a government-run public school system. The mystery then disappears but a sense of relief is not forthcoming, because it took a few generations to make things this way and may well take a few generations to begin to undo the damage.
Didn't someone just post in the thread about Microsoft's indemnification promise that no one had ever sued a handset maker for patent infringement?
I read that post too. It said that no one had ever successfully sued a handset maker who used Linux systems for patent infringement. That remains true unless Microsoft prevails in this suit.
I think his point was that we, and by extension, the aliens, could not tell who the Big Man in a tribe of primitives was without spending time with them, and would certainly not be able to tell who was the real leadership just by remote sensors. The could well land on earth and contact Tiger Woods, thinking that the coverage last year meant that he was leader.
While you are restating his point (which I understood the first time), I will reiterate mine: because we are not an interstellar civilization we are not in a good position to declare what capabilities such a civilization does and does not have.
We can say, "well, we don't think WE could do this and that, because we haven't yet imagined a great way to do it, so clearly no one else could either" but a) that's an overgeneralization and b) that breaks down rapidly when talking about a civilization that is significantly more technologically advanced than we are. It's about as invalid as statements get.
Sorry but repeating or rephrasing it won't change that.
Isn't it absurdly ridiculous how quick they are to catch/follow these types of scams/criminals, but completly useless at catching political lobbying/corruption and wall street scams that cause world wide market unstability, worse than oil price spikes or wars?
They really have their priorities well planned by the powers that be (bought/bribed).
In the case of political corruption and institutionalized financial scams, the people who benefit from them tend to be the same people who write the rules. They are also the people who determine things like the FBI's budget. It's a classic case of the fox guarding the henhouse.
If you think spending more than you have is the ONLY means to overdraft, then you clearly do not know how the system works. A great many overdrafts are the result of errors such as double-ringing at a cash register in a store, or an online service not updating their database properly (this has really happened to me).
While it was lost upon you, there is a reason why I explained that I refuse to carry a debit card and instead use credit cards as charge cards. I do that precisely because I know how the system works. That's something for you to consider prior to declaring what I do and do not know.
The scenarios you mention would not be a problem with a credit card. If a cashier screws up and places a double charge to my credit card, they are doing that with the bank's money, not with my money. I can very easily dispute that double charge and I will prevail in that scenario. Such a dispute/chargeback process is much more hassle for the merchant than it would be for me, providing a disincentive for such sloppiness in the future.
You don't leave yourself open to such things unless you allow a merchant to directly access your money. I choose not to let them do that, and as a result, such problems are unknown to me.
A debit card might be appropriate for someone with bad credit or no credit. It might also be appropriate for people who know they won't use credit responsibly and don't want to cause bad credit for themselves. Otherwise, a credit card is equal to or better than a debit card in every conceivable way.
Everyone assumes aliens will be far more technologically superior to us. If we happened on an Alien planet with prehistorical man, our UAVs still wouldn't be able to tell who their leader is.
And coincidentally enough, we are not capable of interstellar travel.
If your intention was to refute the idea that a civilization capable of interstellar travel would have technology that makes our UAVs look like primitive toys, you have not succeeded.
Slashdot Mirror
Telling an adult that he/she may not put marijuana into his/her own body is an excellent example of a nanny-state law. It just screams "we know what's good for you".
The whole "war on (some) drugs" is one of the most excellent examples of failed public policy available anywhere. Particularly noteworthy is the strong, irrational desire to continue doing it even though we've known for a long time that it isn't actually preventing anyone from obtaining drugs and that it provides a great source of funding for organized crime. The desire to continue the "war on (some) drugs" is obviously not based on any measurement of whether any of its stated goals have been achieved and that's what makes it so interesting. A psychologist could have a field day with one of its more ardent supporters.
The press' job is to sell advertising space. Controversial topics that are inconvenient to rich people are not welcome in this world.
Right, that's why the old standby of "gays in the military" is suddenly an issue again. They pull that one out whenever the American people start getting tired of the latest pointless war. Oddly I haven't seen them mention "flag burning" in a long while. That's another favorite they like to play up when a distraction is needed. Maybe "flag burning" has outlived its usefulness and stem-cell controversies have replaced it.
The pattern is obvious once you consider that we have much bigger problems we should be focusing on. Gay people in the military is a complete non-issue in the face of things like whether our nation is long-term sustainable.
Why yes ... in fact, it's almost as though both government AND media have a lot of the same interests and agendas in common, are very friendly with each other, and feel it is in their mutual interests not to rock each other's boats too much. But if you took a moment to consider that, why, you'd be a conspiracy nutter like the ones they always show on the media...
You know, I've never seen that claim used to back up a rational position. Maybe that has happened somewhere out there, but I've never once seen it. The primary use of loaded words like "patriotism" is to create emotional fervor that shuts down things like dispassionate inquiry and critical thinking.
Therefore, the people who use "patriotism" in the media don't have the same definition of it that I do. My own preference is for that definition that "a patriot supports his country always and his government only when it deserves it." While I can still see sensible decisions being made on the local and state levels, my federal government hasn't deserved my support for a very long time.
If we were so concerned about people getting killed, then we wouldn't invade a sovereign nation and destroy their government because they asked for evidence that bin Laden was involved in 9/11 in response to our extradition request. So clearly, saving lives is not our priority here. It follows that if the government is pissed off about their secrets being leaked it's not because someone might get killed. It's because it makes them lose face and especially because the utter lack of negative consequences reveals that the reason for having those secrets was invalid to begin with.
FOX didn't cause Americans to become a mindless, fat, stupid, herd-mentality, emotionally driven, reactive, childish, flavor-of-the-week, decadent people who hate critical thinking and believe whatever the TV tells them like good little citizens. FOX merely capitalizes on it. They'd risk bankruptcy if they didn't tailor their programming for bovine America.
Typical conservative. Some people might or do abuse the system so let's get rid of the system.
That's not conservative (nor is it liberal). It's authoritarian.
My reasoning here is sound. If I have committed a logical fallacy or other error in my reasoning, you'd do me a favor by pointing it out. If you can't do that, personal attacks will neither add to nor subtract from one thing I've said.
Your logical fallacy is assuming that I was attacking you in the first place. I call things what they are - your attitude about the uselessness of facebook is snooty, judgmental and totally dismissive of the value that half a billion people have found in it. Your entire argument about a pattern of red flags was predicated on the assumption that you were being attacked with no rational basis - I showed you the reason -- a reason you have reinforced with your response -- you just can't accept it because you are at least as colored by irrationality as the people you criticize.
Actually you judged me because you didn't like the basis of my reasoning. If I thought that those with the particular weakness of vanity were inferior to me (and my own particular weaknesses) then I'd have to concede that you were right and I was indeed "snooty". However, that isn't the case.
You decided to assume that I cannot call something "vanity" without viewing myself as superior to it. That is something you cannot know but can only assume. When you assume that at all, and then decide to go with the more negative assumption that is available, you are conducting a personal attack whether or not you realize it. Whether you can appreciate the irony/hypocrisy of judging me while accusing me of judging others is not my concern.
You're also trying to assert something about me personally and put me into the position of proving a negative. That's clever, but the burden of proof is on the accuser and in this case, that's you. It is your problem. As for me, my preference would have been to stick to the facts and reasoning and talk about Facebook instead of talking about each other.
Here's the part you seem to be missing: if Facebook users universally praised me and thought I was the greatest guy ever, it wouldn't change my perception of why they use Facebook. To say that my argument was "predicated on the assumption that [I was] being attacked with no rational basis" is to assume I am petty enough to regard something as true or false based on whether people like to hear it. No, I think Facebook appeals to the vanity in people whether or not someone gets irrationally offended at me for pointing that out.
It just so happens that some of them do get irrationally offended and it doesn't take a genius to understand why they might. But to fixate on that and then make this personally about me is to completely miss my point. Additionally it's terrible form. Most of my interactions with you have been of much higher quality than this.
The truth is, saying that Facebook appeals to a sort of vanity (or egotism if you like) is like saying that Budweiser appeals to people who want to drink. The difference is that the drinker will say "well yeah, that's why I didn't buy non-alcoholic beer" while the Facebook user is likely to get upset.
I call things what they are. If that doesn't please you, you'll just have to be unpleased. You can pretend to know something as complex as my attitude without knowing anything about me personally if that makes you feel justified in your displeasure. That too is a form of vanity, and would handily explain why two lines out of my multi-paragraph post seem to have struck a nerve of yours.
Moving on past your attempt to make a discussion about Facebook into a personal matter, I'll respond to your reasoning.
Pictures of yourself at a drunken party are not necessary to let your friends find you. Neither are posts about the minutia of day-to-day life. Nor are pictures and writings that put yourself in a compromising position. Yet how many "news" stories keep appearing about people who suffer in some way for posting these things? You can find "news" about everything from employers who deny jobs to robbers who break into houses based on information someone willingly posted to Facebook.
If it's hidden, it is not hidden very well. How hard is it to understand that posting personal information to the very most public of places, the global Internet, might have negative repercussions? Not very. After the very first news story about someone who irresponsibly posted personal information and suffered for it, why do such large numbers of people continue to repeat their mistakes? Are they learning-disabled? Possibly, but the sheer numbers of them make another explanation more likely.
It so happens that there is a more likely explanation that fits the facts. Any rational evaluation that the most average of persons is capable of performing would lead to two very easy conclusions: a) the Internet is an extremely public place that is very good at retaining information and b) if you repeat the mistakes of others you can expect to suffer the same fate that they did. It doesn't get much simpler than that. So how do large numbers of people keep failing the simplest of rational decision-making exercises? That's easy. They are not using rational thought processes because they are motivated by something that is not rational. That irrational "something" is easily identified: vanity.
Perhaps you don't like that. To tell you the truth, I'm not precisely thrilled about it myself. Yet the situation didn't ask for my approval before it happened, and I suspect it didn't require yours either. As I explained, I call things what they are. My reasoning here is sound. If I have committed a logical fallacy or other error in my reasoning, you'd do me a favor by pointing it out. If you can't do that, personal attacks will neither add to nor subtract from one thing I've said.
I really am regretting ever creating a Facebook account. If things carry on in this direction, I shall delete the thing soon.
Those of us who found serious problems (mainly privacy-related) with Facebook from the very beginning, decided not to participate at all, and said so, tended to catch some flak for it. As in, something other than a well-reasoned rebuttal to the position. Usually this was in the form of someone's personal offense that I would point out a flaw in their favorite new service, or that I would steadfastly value the privacy they seem to have given up on.
"If things carry on in this direction" indeed. I think this is like many political proposals. People tend to look at short-term effects without considering that these represent movement in a particular direction. The path that the momentum is taking can be identified early on and the destination can be known long before the end of that path is reached. It is something of a law of nature that events tend to unfold, to evolve, to become more so, to continue along their current direction in a straight line unless some counter-force alters that path. The longer something goes on the more inertia it accumulates; the more inertia it has the greater that counter-force (or backlash) must be to have any effect.
I for one identified early on that Facebook and similar sites appeal to a form of vanity I do not personally possess. Even if I did find that tempting, vanity is not a rational reason to participate in something. They do this while coming with disadvantages I find unacceptable, such as the loss of control over any personal information posted there (read their privacy policies, they make this quite clear) and the extensive use of personal information for tracking and marketing purposes. As another poster has pointed out in reply to you, you have no real assurance that your account is ever truly deleted even after going through a needlessly complex process to request that this be done.
The pattern here is a valuable one to recognize and simplicity itself. When many proponents of something display that kind of denigrating personal offense when you question the purpose or usefulness of that thing, and resent that you question it rationally at all, it should be a red flag. I've rarely or never seen anyone do that when the object in question is an inherently good or useful thing that can stand on its own merits. The regret you express can be described as a lesson about popularity, trend, and bandwagon appeal and the unwarranted power these can have over your decision-making. To be sure, it is a valuable one.
I sometimes have that effect.
The fact that you would make such a ridiculous statement shows that you literally lack even the most basic understanding of Operating Systems and computer security.
Sometimes even an understanding of OSes and computer security isn't enough to override that annoying "all viewpoints are equally valid" undercurrent that corrupts many otherwise good-natured discussions about the whole "Linux/OSX vs Windows" topic. If the person in question were disinclined to be swayed by this unstated undercurrent, then the fact that Windows requires so much third-party software just to begin to achieve basic security would be a huge tip-off.
I'm more afraid of the people finding it "Informative". In my mind's eye I'm seeing the CIA taking careful notes while reading /.
It'd be more like the CIA wondering what took Slashdot so long to figure that out.
Not only that, I was just reading a story at Ars about how Jon Landau believes everything should be 3D. He calls out studios on hasty 3D conversions. I'd say the pot is calling the kettle black. His film had plenty of problems.
"Converting a movie from 2D to 3D is not a technical process. It is a creative process,"
You know what? After watching your flick at IMAX in 3D and halfway through wanting to leave with my headache, you're doing it wrong. As has been brought up before in previous Slashdot discussions, you can't get a proper 3D effect that will fool the brain with current technology. Stop trying to convert 2D films to 3D, especially for the point of being "OMG 3D" like parent mentioned.
The 3D effect worked decently well for me, better than I expected. There was one part of it that screwed with me though.
... until my eyes reached the actual boundary of the screen. Then the entire image would suddenly collapse back into a 2D picture until I again was looking more directly at the screen.
If I was looking more or less at the center of the screen, to the periphery it would appear (fairly convincingly) that certain objects were jutting out, past the boundary of the screen. Then I would sometimes attempt to follow those objects with my eyes and the illusion would continue
The 3D was far better than I was expecting, which wasn't much. It's still nothing like a true hologram where you could walk all the way around it and see it from many different angles. I couldn't even remain in my seat and move my eyes very far around it without dispelling the illusion. The headaches are something I did not experience but have heard often. I think that could be remedied by becoming conscious of whether you are straining your eyes in order to force a certain perception, as a setup like that might tempt you to do.
It is allowing studios to hide really poorly written and acted scripts from kiddies that are more impressed with shiny 3d. It is now at the stage where if I see the movie is being advertised as being 3D I write it off as garbage without even bothering to see it now.
It does accomplish one useful thing. 3D and other experiences you currently can't get at home are the right way to fight piracy. I like that a damn sight better than taking old grandmas, dead people, and children to court. I also like it better than bribing politicians for increasingly draconian laws just to prop up an industry that refuses to learn how to deal with the information age. For that matter, it's better than ACTA and other secret treaties that threaten the integrity of our entire political process by occurring behind closed doors beyond public scrutiny.
In the fact of that, things that have always been around, like poorly written scripts covered up by some kind of visual effect, are downright benign.
who cares what it's all about as long as the kids go
-Roger Waters
Sounds like every pointless Vietnam-style war we've fought over the last ten years.
Sorry, for a moment I forgot we were talking about movies and box office sales.
It's pedantry when the masses who comment (including myself) comment on the meta-issues rather than on the actual achievements of this father and son.
The cause and effect of that is easy to establish. Had the editors produced an accurate headline/summary few (if any) of those comments would have been made. You can hack at the branches of this if you like but I prefer to call out its root.
Slashdot staff consists of the "editors". Real article moderation would make it more difficult for the "editors" to remain in denial that they are failures as editors. Therefore Slashdot staff are unlikely to implement real article moderation.
That'd just be another form of trolling.
I'm not seeing much of that. As another person pointed out, most of those comments disputing the summary are about its accuracy. Nineteen miles is not space, that's just a fact. This balloon is an aircraft, not a spacecraft and that's just a fact. Basic facts like these that directly relate to the core of the story are exactly what an editor is supposed to get right. The Slashdot "editors" have failed miserably to do their jobs, yet again. That's the only thing anyone is shitting on and it's a worthy target for some fecal matter.
It's not really pedantry when you expect paid professionals (such as Slashdot "editors") to perform at least a mediocre job. If they finally achieve mediocrity it might even make sense to discuss whether it's reasonable to expect excellence.
So either blind conformity or homicidal maniac? Ever heard of the fallacy of the excluded middle? Or are you intentionally portraying all free-thinkers as crazy killers in order to discredit free thought?
The key point I think you're missing is simple: replace conformity with informed consent. The trick there is that informed consent requires something essential in order to function: it requires something that can be found reasonable enough that the informed would consent to it. The current school curriculum fails that criteria; it would not be an extreme statement to say that it hates reason in favor of submissive obedience.
The only trash I see is when someone like you comments about my post without reading the two links I provided. Those links, incidentally, would reveal to you why the points you raise are irrelevant. While it gave you a nice platform to make known your disdain of homeschooling (i.e. your attempt to interject opinion into a factual discussion) this too was irrelevant.
And you were modded up. Nice self-fulfilling prohecy.
How most people can't see this is quite a mystery unless you are willing to entertain the idea that people are not naturally this blind and must be trained to be this way. Then you realize this is the main reason for having a government-run public school system. The mystery then disappears but a sense of relief is not forthcoming, because it took a few generations to make things this way and may well take a few generations to begin to undo the damage.
Didn't someone just post in the thread about Microsoft's indemnification promise that no one had ever sued a handset maker for patent infringement?
I read that post too. It said that no one had ever successfully sued a handset maker who used Linux systems for patent infringement. That remains true unless Microsoft prevails in this suit.
I think his point was that we, and by extension, the aliens, could not tell who the Big Man in a tribe of primitives was without spending time with them, and would certainly not be able to tell who was the real leadership just by remote sensors. The could well land on earth and contact Tiger Woods, thinking that the coverage last year meant that he was leader.
While you are restating his point (which I understood the first time), I will reiterate mine: because we are not an interstellar civilization we are not in a good position to declare what capabilities such a civilization does and does not have.
We can say, "well, we don't think WE could do this and that, because we haven't yet imagined a great way to do it, so clearly no one else could either" but a) that's an overgeneralization and b) that breaks down rapidly when talking about a civilization that is significantly more technologically advanced than we are. It's about as invalid as statements get.
Sorry but repeating or rephrasing it won't change that.
Isn't it absurdly ridiculous how quick they are to catch/follow these types of scams/criminals, but completly useless at catching political lobbying/corruption and wall street scams that cause world wide market unstability, worse than oil price spikes or wars?
They really have their priorities well planned by the powers that be (bought/bribed).
In the case of political corruption and institutionalized financial scams, the people who benefit from them tend to be the same people who write the rules. They are also the people who determine things like the FBI's budget. It's a classic case of the fox guarding the henhouse.
While it was lost upon you, there is a reason why I explained that I refuse to carry a debit card and instead use credit cards as charge cards. I do that precisely because I know how the system works. That's something for you to consider prior to declaring what I do and do not know.
The scenarios you mention would not be a problem with a credit card. If a cashier screws up and places a double charge to my credit card, they are doing that with the bank's money, not with my money. I can very easily dispute that double charge and I will prevail in that scenario. Such a dispute/chargeback process is much more hassle for the merchant than it would be for me, providing a disincentive for such sloppiness in the future.
You don't leave yourself open to such things unless you allow a merchant to directly access your money. I choose not to let them do that, and as a result, such problems are unknown to me.
A debit card might be appropriate for someone with bad credit or no credit. It might also be appropriate for people who know they won't use credit responsibly and don't want to cause bad credit for themselves. Otherwise, a credit card is equal to or better than a debit card in every conceivable way.
That reminds me of a bumper sticker I once saw. It read: "When the aliens come, I hope they eat the FAT people first!"
I'm sure somebody got their panties in a wad over that one.
Everyone assumes aliens will be far more technologically superior to us. If we happened on an Alien planet with prehistorical man, our UAVs still wouldn't be able to tell who their leader is.
And coincidentally enough, we are not capable of interstellar travel.
If your intention was to refute the idea that a civilization capable of interstellar travel would have technology that makes our UAVs look like primitive toys, you have not succeeded.