Putin is leading a full-scale propaganda war against the west, intended at undermining trust in our democarcies and our institutions.
Putin did?
The Republicans spent the last 40 years undermining trust in our institutions and democracies. The whole fucking last 8 years was a de-legitimization campaign against the executive branch. Stupid shit like "starve the beast" and the "norquist pledge" are the rallying cries for a race to the bottom in governance. And the Democrats let them do it. Because they've been running away from "common man politics" because anything left of the John Birch Society is "socialism." Political cowardice has governed the Democrats ever since Reagan won.
And the Press have shown even more cowardice, refusing to call out obvious bullshit and giving bloviating idiots like Trump FOUR billion fucking dollars of free air time. Because a clown-car wreck is more entertaining than covering issues. And any politician caught talking about issues (and their supporters) was ridiculed or ignored. And anything coming out of Hillary's mouth was golden, somehow, even if it was disingenuous (standing on stage next to Bernie mouthing the issues we all know damn well that she would abandon if elected).
Hillary's only selling point that she emphasized was that she "wasn't Trump." Big fuckin' deal. If you're going to elect "not trump" then a ham sandwich could stand in for that position. At least a ham sandwich didn't have the awful negatives that Hillary had. Hillary's campaign was the most tone-deaf thing I have had to waste my time watching go over a cliff.
The cynicism, self-dealing, gas-lighting, all of it made voters turn their noses up in disgust.
Putin didn't have to do a goddamned thing to undermine faith in our democracy and institutions. The people charged with running them have abdicated their responsibilities in favor of their own prurient interests.
I find that those who oppose any kind of societal safety net have never had to use the resources of one.
And they never expect to.
This.... is delusional. You will age. You/will/ fall ill. Be it 6 months out of work for a septic knee (like what Tom Brady had), or full disability because nobody wants to hire someone who has to go to doctors' appointments 1/4 of the days out of a month on a regular basis. BAD SHIT IS GOING TO HAPPEN TO YOU SOMETIME IN YOUR LIFE THAT YOU WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO PLAN FOR.
I don't like wishing bad things on people. I don't need to. Because they happen anyway.
Against the safety net? Good luck to you. You'll need it.
You're an AC but so you won't get this, but the breathlessness (starting straight away in the introduction) with which TWIF was written strikes me as a piece of fan-fiction, almost.
But that's just my impression.
That's because Friedman wasn't talking to people like me. He was talking to people who have capital to move. Which is definitely not me. The world being "flat" where you can just move capital wherever the cost is lowest in a hydraulic press downward effect on wages would be good for someone to make a quick buck in the short run.
A 'science' built on false assumptions is what we call a pseudo-science. Much like homeopathy.
>what friedman says
Friedman can go piss up a rope. I read his book "the world is flat" and I have come to the conclusion that he entirely believes his own bullshit. Which is what it is. He argues that capital/should/ be fungible and it's a great thing that it is. The problem is that people aren't. There is no such thing as the free movement of people which is what you'd expect in a true free-market where capital is allocated.
And he sees none of his views as harmful. So he can go fuck himself with his own book.
>what we can do
Deal with the market as it is, instead of trying to do it through gedankenexperiments-as-religion based upon nonsense.
They (economists like Friedman) keep trying to make Economics a hard science, when it's not - it's a soft science at best like Sociology. It's not physics and will never be like physics.
But they will keep trying, and getting people to buy their tomes. Because witchcraft still sells.
A supposedly free market depends on fully informed consumers and producers both making rational choices for their own interests.
Just look at that statement. Look at the assumptions built into it. Tell me that's not a lot of horse shit. Information imbalance always existed. People are hardly rational. Free markets never existed, even when humanity consisted of 300 or so person pre-metal tribes.
And then Led Zeppelin came along.
But seriously, a free market is like a unicorn, with wings and the whole nine yards - a unicorn can be described, even painted, animated, carved into wood/stone/titanium, and stories and games written around it, but it doesn't exist and never will. Just like a free market.
It is a figment of imagination and always will be. The fact that so many believe that it's a real thing says that a lot of people are willing to believe bullshit. It's not a fact. It's a religion. It's like believing that My Little Pony Friendship is Magic is a documentary. Rational adults know better.
>If you're a high school dropout and your dad and grandad spent their entire lives working in that mill,
If you went to school and became an engineer, millwright, or toolmaker or machinist (which you/also/ need besides just machine operators to run a manufacturing business) or a computing professionals (Database admin, IT, and probably a couple of programmers, some of whom are probably the aformentioned millwrights, toolmakers, machinists and engineers) or accountant, you were also SOL.
Manufacturing doesn't just employ "high school dropouts." It employs a bunch of people with 2 and 4 year degrees and 4-5 year apprenticeships.
And all that shit has gone to China.
That's why people cheered when Trump said he was against TPP and that NAFTA was a raw deal and why people like me (a toolmaker) who are/liberal/ saw Clinton's pick of Tim Kaine as a giant middle finger. (I couldn't bring myself to vote for Clinton. I wound up voting for Stein instead. Because, what the hell, I may as well contribute to a possible 5% vote for the greens instead of wasting my vote).
And with all that manufacturing going to China, so will the management. All those people/also/ with 4 year degrees are SOL.
And all the "free trade" assholes don't see/any/ of this as harmful.
Free trade isn't fair trade, and the election of Trump is "calling bullshit" on the whole concept of "free trade" because it was never "free" in the first place and the neoliberal fuckfaces like the Clintons never bothered with fair trade because it didn't line the pockets of their donors. If you can't have actual "free trade" then "fair trade" is what you should strive for, but according to the globalist neoliberals, we should/never/ have that. Because it cuts out arbitrage. Because arbitrage what matters most in society.
*spit*
-- BMO
"Free Trade" doesn't exist. It is a mythical construct like a unicorn or like a friction-free inclined plane in physics.
Anyone with a passing familiarity with malware knows that such spear-phishing scams may be/anyone//anywhere/.
So they're Russian, you say? (picture of Putin glowering at the top of the article) How come you're so/certain/ it's the Russian government and not, you know, the Russian Mob (Russian Business Network and affiliates) or someone in the RBN pretending to be FSB or any combination of Russian speaking expatriates or even the CIA posing as FSB or RBN or something much more mundane?
>undetectable >detected >passed by the filters
BECAUSE ANYONE WITH ANY SENSE IN HIS HEAD WHO IS WRITING MALWARE HAS ALL THESE FILTERS THEMSELVES TO MAKE SURE THEY PASS BEFORE RELEASING INTO THE WILD.
This has been standard operations for malware for the past, oh, nearly 20 years. Because the filters are only as good as the latest definitions and anything not in the definitions is going to skate right on by. THIS IS NOT NEW.
I'm treating these nearly fact-free vague news stories like this as pure propaganda, because that's what they are. Like our top-secret-hush-hush "CLANDESTINE" retaliations at the putative "russians"/announced/ on NBC News (fucking really?).
This fucking forced march into a new Cold War is fucking stupid. The clowns that have been pushing for it since the collapse of the Soviet Union need to be imprisoned at the very least.
Back in the 90s and early 00s I used to go back and forth from Rhode Island to Toronto every weekend or every other weekend (and off to Bobcaygeon).
I was envious of the prosperity across the border. American Exceptionalism became less exceptional.
>more stringent ecological rules and laws >higher taxes >universal healthcare (OHIP). >whole corridor from Windsor to Oshawa more prosperous than anything with comparable population south of the border.
Somehow it seems that there's been a bunch of lyin' by certain politicians over the decades.
>Forcing everyone else to adapt to your tiny little world will end up with you being alone and ignored in your tiny little world.
Tiny little world? Many *many* businesses have "standardized" on Office 97 as the document format. Why? Because it's "well known" and other office suites have little trouble with it (like WordPerfect and Libre).
It's not an ISO standard, but it's "standard enough."
Speaking of ISO standards, Microsoft still doesn't support their own standard. Especially in light of the fact that ODF is even in MS Office.
The point stands, though. Out of 80 some-odd groups from a selection of over 60,000 groups, Cox et al., dropped Usenet totally because of Anthony Cuomo.
>I suspect most of the "dark web"'s reputation (including it's nefarious-sounding name) is mostly made up by the media,
It's the exact same thing we heard about the BBS scene and the early Internet. Fucking Anthony Weiner got ISPs to drop Usenet altogether because/some/ groups were echoing "bad pictures" (the fucking IRONY!).
And that was/this/ century.
Fuck all these guys.
Tech reporting is a fucking nightmare. The new article at Slate about some sort of connection between a Trump DNS server and a Russian bank is a fucking mess. I don't doubt that Trump might have High Friends in Low Places in a Russian bank, but... jesus. The article is like listening to an article about a game of telephone.
So if someone has the temerity to hand you a resume and they have the name "Laquan" or "Shaniqua" or even "Lexus" you're going to turn them down because the name is "low class" and it's the one their *parents* gave them (You didn't choose/your/ name, did you? Most people don't.)
So you're prejudiced against what someone's parents named them. Good Job.
You and all the other assholes that judge people by their names are idiots.
Furthermore, if you're black and your last name is "smith" it's likely that it was the name of the family that owned your ancestors.
Which is why the whole "Shaniqua" thing. It's why Malcolm X used the name he used - to abandon the "slave name."
It's not a "stupid" cultural thing. There is a rationale behind it if you bother to even use google for 5 minutes (I knew this when I was 5. Before the Internet. Back when people had to travel miles to call me an asshole. Up hill. Both ways. In the snow.).
It's like I'm talking to morons that somehow got low number Slashdot IDs.
In Rhode Island, low-number vehicle license plates are a status symbol - the lower the number the more political "pull" you have, or you bought one off a family that had it handed down since the Model T or somehow inherited one.
Contents of email, chats, voicemail, etc., are less important than who you talked to, when, and where. The number of times you communicate with someone says how important they are. It tells people who your friends really are, in spite of what you/say/ about your friends. If $JOE_FBI asks you about $RANDOMPERSON and you say "I don't know $RANDOMPERSON" and the metadata says you talked to $RANDOMPERSON 8 times last week, that's significant. Metadata is also more searchable and compact.
Metadata tells you who is an active member of an organization, to be rounded up and imprisoned later - one that $JOE_FBI might be assigned to or simply has a grudge against.
Saying "it's not equal to them giving up access to the device" is minimizing the importance of metadata.
Slashdot Mirror
Putin is leading a full-scale propaganda war against the west, intended at undermining trust in our democarcies and our institutions.
Putin did?
The Republicans spent the last 40 years undermining trust in our institutions and democracies. The whole fucking last 8 years was a de-legitimization campaign against the executive branch. Stupid shit like "starve the beast" and the "norquist pledge" are the rallying cries for a race to the bottom in governance. And the Democrats let them do it. Because they've been running away from "common man politics" because anything left of the John Birch Society is "socialism." Political cowardice has governed the Democrats ever since Reagan won.
And the Press have shown even more cowardice, refusing to call out obvious bullshit and giving bloviating idiots like Trump FOUR billion fucking dollars of free air time. Because a clown-car wreck is more entertaining than covering issues. And any politician caught talking about issues (and their supporters) was ridiculed or ignored. And anything coming out of Hillary's mouth was golden, somehow, even if it was disingenuous (standing on stage next to Bernie mouthing the issues we all know damn well that she would abandon if elected).
Hillary's only selling point that she emphasized was that she "wasn't Trump." Big fuckin' deal. If you're going to elect "not trump" then a ham sandwich could stand in for that position. At least a ham sandwich didn't have the awful negatives that Hillary had. Hillary's campaign was the most tone-deaf thing I have had to waste my time watching go over a cliff.
The cynicism, self-dealing, gas-lighting, all of it made voters turn their noses up in disgust.
Putin didn't have to do a goddamned thing to undermine faith in our democracy and institutions. The people charged with running them have abdicated their responsibilities in favor of their own prurient interests.
I suggest that it's you who has to wake up.
--
BMO
I find that those who oppose any kind of societal safety net have never had to use the resources of one.
And they never expect to.
This.... is delusional. You will age. You /will/ fall ill. Be it 6 months out of work for a septic knee (like what Tom Brady had), or full disability because nobody wants to hire someone who has to go to doctors' appointments 1/4 of the days out of a month on a regular basis. BAD SHIT IS GOING TO HAPPEN TO YOU SOMETIME IN YOUR LIFE THAT YOU WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO PLAN FOR.
I don't like wishing bad things on people. I don't need to. Because they happen anyway.
Against the safety net? Good luck to you. You'll need it.
--
BMO
You're an AC but so you won't get this, but the breathlessness (starting straight away in the introduction) with which TWIF was written strikes me as a piece of fan-fiction, almost.
But that's just my impression.
That's because Friedman wasn't talking to people like me. He was talking to people who have capital to move. Which is definitely not me. The world being "flat" where you can just move capital wherever the cost is lowest in a hydraulic press downward effect on wages would be good for someone to make a quick buck in the short run.
For everyone else? not so much.
--
BMO
A 'science' built on false assumptions is what we call a pseudo-science. Much like homeopathy.
>what friedman says
Friedman can go piss up a rope. I read his book "the world is flat" and I have come to the conclusion that he entirely believes his own bullshit. Which is what it is. He argues that capital /should/ be fungible and it's a great thing that it is. The problem is that people aren't. There is no such thing as the free movement of people which is what you'd expect in a true free-market where capital is allocated.
And he sees none of his views as harmful. So he can go fuck himself with his own book.
>what we can do
Deal with the market as it is, instead of trying to do it through gedankenexperiments-as-religion based upon nonsense.
They (economists like Friedman) keep trying to make Economics a hard science, when it's not - it's a soft science at best like Sociology. It's not physics and will never be like physics.
But they will keep trying, and getting people to buy their tomes. Because witchcraft still sells.
--
BMO
A supposedly free market depends on fully informed consumers and producers both making rational choices for their own interests.
Just look at that statement. Look at the assumptions built into it. Tell me that's not a lot of horse shit. Information imbalance always existed. People are hardly rational. Free markets never existed, even when humanity consisted of 300 or so person pre-metal tribes.
And then Led Zeppelin came along.
But seriously, a free market is like a unicorn, with wings and the whole nine yards - a unicorn can be described, even painted, animated, carved into wood/stone/titanium, and stories and games written around it, but it doesn't exist and never will. Just like a free market.
It is a figment of imagination and always will be. The fact that so many believe that it's a real thing says that a lot of people are willing to believe bullshit. It's not a fact. It's a religion. It's like believing that My Little Pony Friendship is Magic is a documentary. Rational adults know better.
--
BMO
>If you're a high school dropout and your dad and grandad spent their entire lives working in that mill,
If you went to school and became an engineer, millwright, or toolmaker or machinist (which you /also/ need besides just machine operators to run a manufacturing business) or a computing professionals (Database admin, IT, and probably a couple of programmers, some of whom are probably the aformentioned millwrights, toolmakers, machinists and engineers) or accountant, you were also SOL.
Manufacturing doesn't just employ "high school dropouts." It employs a bunch of people with 2 and 4 year degrees and 4-5 year apprenticeships.
And all that shit has gone to China.
That's why people cheered when Trump said he was against TPP and that NAFTA was a raw deal and why people like me (a toolmaker) who are /liberal/ saw Clinton's pick of Tim Kaine as a giant middle finger. (I couldn't bring myself to vote for Clinton. I wound up voting for Stein instead. Because, what the hell, I may as well contribute to a possible 5% vote for the greens instead of wasting my vote).
And with all that manufacturing going to China, so will the management. All those people /also/ with 4 year degrees are SOL.
And all the "free trade" assholes don't see /any/ of this as harmful.
Free trade isn't fair trade, and the election of Trump is "calling bullshit" on the whole concept of "free trade" because it was never "free" in the first place and the neoliberal fuckfaces like the Clintons never bothered with fair trade because it didn't line the pockets of their donors. If you can't have actual "free trade" then "fair trade" is what you should strive for, but according to the globalist neoliberals, we should /never/ have that. Because it cuts out arbitrage. Because arbitrage what matters most in society.
*spit*
--
BMO
"Free Trade" doesn't exist. It is a mythical construct like a unicorn or like a friction-free inclined plane in physics.
Rule 29 is now amended thusly:
Rule 29 (a) In the Internet all the girls are men and all kids are undercover FBI agents.
(b) All child porn servers are FBI servers
Which should have been obvious before this.
--
BMO
Anyone with a passing familiarity with malware knows that such spear-phishing scams may be /anyone/ /anywhere/.
So they're Russian, you say? (picture of Putin glowering at the top of the article) How come you're so /certain/ it's the Russian government and not, you know, the Russian Mob (Russian Business Network and affiliates) or someone in the RBN pretending to be FSB or any combination of Russian speaking expatriates or even the CIA posing as FSB or RBN or something much more mundane?
>undetectable
>detected
>passed by the filters
BECAUSE ANYONE WITH ANY SENSE IN HIS HEAD WHO IS WRITING MALWARE HAS ALL THESE FILTERS THEMSELVES TO MAKE SURE THEY PASS BEFORE RELEASING INTO THE WILD.
This has been standard operations for malware for the past, oh, nearly 20 years. Because the filters are only as good as the latest definitions and anything not in the definitions is going to skate right on by. THIS IS NOT NEW.
I'm treating these nearly fact-free vague news stories like this as pure propaganda, because that's what they are. Like our top-secret-hush-hush "CLANDESTINE" retaliations at the putative "russians" /announced/ on NBC News (fucking really?).
This fucking forced march into a new Cold War is fucking stupid. The clowns that have been pushing for it since the collapse of the Soviet Union need to be imprisoned at the very least.
--
BMO
Back in the 90s and early 00s I used to go back and forth from Rhode Island to Toronto every weekend or every other weekend (and off to Bobcaygeon).
I was envious of the prosperity across the border. American Exceptionalism became less exceptional.
>more stringent ecological rules and laws
>higher taxes
>universal healthcare (OHIP).
>whole corridor from Windsor to Oshawa more prosperous than anything with comparable population south of the border.
Somehow it seems that there's been a bunch of lyin' by certain politicians over the decades.
--
BMO
>I wish the voters had picked a different agent for change.
Obviously they picked Agent Orange.
--
BMO
>Forcing everyone else to adapt to your tiny little world will end up with you being alone and ignored in your tiny little world.
Tiny little world? Many *many* businesses have "standardized" on Office 97 as the document format. Why? Because it's "well known" and other office suites have little trouble with it (like WordPerfect and Libre).
It's not an ISO standard, but it's "standard enough."
Speaking of ISO standards, Microsoft still doesn't support their own standard. Especially in light of the fact that ODF is even in MS Office.
--
BMO
I'm pretty sure he preferred to look like a girl scout.
--
BMO
Thus as it is has been inscribed in glowing green phosphor on Facebook since the dawn of the Age:
Stock doctor and witch broker at Database Corruption Incorporated
October 26, 1965 to present
Edit your work
Studied Database fuckery at Pimento University, Pimento CA
Past: Mianus Secondary School, Mianus CT
Lives in Norton, Vermont
From Archangel, Arkhangel'Skaya Oblast', Russia
---------------
What kind of recruiters will I attract?
--
BMO
>Now I know I'm conflating CO and CO2,
You were better to "conflate" the two because of current emissions controls. The point of a catalytic converter is to make CO into CO2.
Unless your Aunt Stacy is running an antique from before the first gas crisis.
--
BMO
Yeah, you're right.
>bonehead
I'll take it.
The point stands, though. Out of 80 some-odd groups from a selection of over 60,000 groups, Cox et al., dropped Usenet totally because of Anthony Cuomo.
Because "boogity-boo!"
--
BMO
>I suspect most of the "dark web"'s reputation (including it's nefarious-sounding name) is mostly made up by the media,
It's the exact same thing we heard about the BBS scene and the early Internet. Fucking Anthony Weiner got ISPs to drop Usenet altogether because /some/ groups were echoing "bad pictures" (the fucking IRONY!).
And that was /this/ century.
Fuck all these guys.
Tech reporting is a fucking nightmare. The new article at Slate about some sort of connection between a Trump DNS server and a Russian bank is a fucking mess. I don't doubt that Trump might have High Friends in Low Places in a Russian bank, but ... jesus. The article is like listening to an article about a game of telephone.
--
BMO
So if someone has the temerity to hand you a resume and they have the name "Laquan" or "Shaniqua" or even "Lexus" you're going to turn them down because the name is "low class" and it's the one their *parents* gave them (You didn't choose /your/ name, did you? Most people don't.)
So you're prejudiced against what someone's parents named them. Good Job.
You and all the other assholes that judge people by their names are idiots.
"No Irish Need Apply"
http://api.ning.com/files/Bykv...
--
BMO
Furthermore, if you're black and your last name is "smith" it's likely that it was the name of the family that owned your ancestors.
Which is why the whole "Shaniqua" thing. It's why Malcolm X used the name he used - to abandon the "slave name."
It's not a "stupid" cultural thing. There is a rationale behind it if you bother to even use google for 5 minutes (I knew this when I was 5. Before the Internet. Back when people had to travel miles to call me an asshole. Up hill. Both ways. In the snow.).
Knowing history makes the world less confusing.
--
BMO
It's like I'm talking to morons that somehow got low number Slashdot IDs.
In Rhode Island, low-number vehicle license plates are a status symbol - the lower the number the more political "pull" you have, or you bought one off a family that had it handed down since the Model T or somehow inherited one.
Which leads me to ask:
Did you buy yours?
--
BMO
It means your family was English and that they were metalworkers when there were guilds.
Smith, Chandler, Cooper - these are all trades.
--
BMO
>Are you saying that you can tell someone's race by their name? But if races are social constructs and not real, what are they really measuring?
Prejudice.
>can't tell heritage by name
You really can't tell if someone who has a french, indian, polish, italian heritage by their last name? You need to get out more.
--
BMO
"Company head says my company is the leader in current buzzword-hype-technology."
indeed.
If RH is so great for "the cloud" why does Google use a modified version of Ubuntu in-house on their servers?
RH management seems to be getting more psychopathic over the years.
--
BMO
Metadata is more useful.
Contents of email, chats, voicemail, etc., are less important than who you talked to, when, and where. The number of times you communicate with someone says how important they are. It tells people who your friends really are, in spite of what you /say/ about your friends. If $JOE_FBI asks you about $RANDOMPERSON and you say "I don't know $RANDOMPERSON" and the metadata says you talked to $RANDOMPERSON 8 times last week, that's significant. Metadata is also more searchable and compact.
Metadata tells you who is an active member of an organization, to be rounded up and imprisoned later - one that $JOE_FBI might be assigned to or simply has a grudge against.
Saying "it's not equal to them giving up access to the device" is minimizing the importance of metadata.
--
BMO
>Are you telling me that it's ludicrous that the Russian government would hack into servers and publicize contents to its advantage?
What advantage? Seriously, what do the Russians gain by it? Edumacate me.
I don't see anything. What I do see is a smokescreen by the Clinton team.
--
BMO
>All major text editors have also moved to light grey on darker grey text.
To which I change to cyan on dark blue.
It's like I'm still in Turbo Pascal.
--
BMO