Surely if the Swedes were willing to pay for a (potentially one-way) plane ticket for Assange....
I don't think they were. One of Assanges objections was that he asked if he was wanted for questioning, was told he wasn't, so left the country, then was expected to buy another plane ticket to come back for questioning he was originally told wasn't going to happen.
Or they could make use of videoconferencing and save themselves the cost of the tickets if there's no reason to bring him to Sweden.
This is a very rational point, I believe one that Assanges lawyers made, but was rejected for some reason.
Sort of. That's what makes the entire thing so weird. If he had just gone to Sweden and done the whole interview thing the whole case would have been dropped ages ago.
Fighting it just makes him look guilty.
I remember reading that while he was in Sweeden, he asked something along the lines of "do you need me for questioning on this, or am I ok to leave the country?", was told that he was not needed, so left (probabaly thinking that the case had been dropped so he wouldn't hear about it again). Afterwards, they changed their minds (or someone else took it upon themselves to take control of the case). I can see why he might be slightly suspicious at least. You are right, the whole thing is a bit weird.
There are lots of things someone can do that might make them look guilty*; luckily most courts require evidence.
* Some would say that encrypting communications over the internet makes someone look guilty, for example.
I would love to pay an artist for his work. Maybe they could print an email address I could Paypal some money to?
Have a look at Jamendo - the music there is all creative commons of some sort, and there is often a "support this artist" link. I think the last time I paid money for music was because I really liked something I got from Jamendo and went back to the artist's page to support them.
*My* brilliant idea is to have the entire side wall of the car roll up like a garage door so that people can board and detrain en masse. The problem is with the placement of the seats.
You could replace the aisle/walkway down the middle with seats, and have two walkways either side of the seats. You either have all the chairs facing one direction, or in a back-to-back arrangement. If you could configure it so that people would only get off one side of the train (this requires the platforms to be on the same side the whole journey), you would only need your new door on one side, and leave the second side as it is currently.
I like your idea, however there may be some problems with trains that are particuarly crowded (people could get pushed off at stops, and you would have to be careful lowering the door).
It's interesting you should mention that. Are icons really faster than text to recognize?
I doubt it. Humans are trained to read text from the time we start school, and we're really good at it for most of us.
Most icons are going to take up less space on the screen compared to text, so you can fit more on. I suspect that, even if text is faster to read, the size benefit would probabaly win over it.
I guess there is also the idea that the same icon can be used across multiple languages, so long as the meaning is the same, without having to translate lots of buttons.
Although nowadays you do have this weird situation whereby an icon of an abstract concept is still used as an icon, but no longer used in the physical world. For example, a "save" button often uses an image of a floppy disk as the icon - there will be children (if not now, then soon) who understand that this image means to save a file, but would have never seen a floppy disk before.
(I did not even take the time to search, but I assumed Google Plus is a minor feature already retired).
You are assuming wrong as there has been some recent integrations of Google Plus with other Google services - Google Reader for example. They also added the functionality in the search bar for "+" to go to the Google Plus page for that company (it appears as one of the suggestions).
The bathos of it becomes apparent when you realize the OWS protesters live in $300,000 homes or $1500/month apartments, have been oversupplied with everything they could possibly want (quick- count how many $400 cell phones are in that picture, $100 pieces of clothing, or people with $3000 laptops. Hell, how many of those POOR kids are drinking $5 cups of coffee?) or are raging because, having accumulated massive amounts of debt getting educations of little actual value, they now suddenly realize that they actually might be held responsible for their shitty self-choices or a basic heedlessness that "good times don't go on forever"?
In a recent UK TV show (Have I got News for you), one of the panelists (a conservative MP I believe) was complaining about the protesters in London using similar words to yours ("Why are they protesting capitalist greed while drinking £5 coffee?"). Another panelist almost didn't repond because the premise was too stupid, but eventually did saying "You don't have to go back to a barter system to protest about excessive greed", or words to that effect.
Also, the logical fallacy Tu quoque seems worth mentioning here.
I am walking along a trail in the jungle. I arrive at a fork in the trail leading to two villages of Amazon tribeswomen. At the fork, there is a member of one of the two tribes, but I'm not certain which. One tribe's members always tell the truth, the other always lie. One tribe kidnaps travelers and makes them their sex slaves. The other does not.
Siri, what question should I ask this woman?
The classic example has the restriction that you can only ask one question (so if there was only one tribe member there, you would ask "if a member of the other tribe was asked the question 'which way should I go to avoid kidnapping?', what would their answer be?", and do the opposite)
Without that restriction you can ask a few control questions to determine whether they are telling the truth or lying, and then ask them about it ("what is your gender?" for example)
In one of the Order of the Stick comics, with one lier and one truth teller, someone shoots an arrow into the foot of one of them to figure out which one is the one that tells the truth by their reaction ("Why did you shoot me in the foot" vs "She did not just shoot you in the foot")
The recent episode about the fat bumbling idiot with the talking baby was the straw that broke the camel's back.
That was James someone (Cordon I think, I'm not sure). He was/is one of the main characters in another fairly popular series in the UK (and was in an episode in the previous Doctor Who series) , so his role was partially "special guest celebrity".
I'm not a particular fan either; the episode seemed to be more "lets write a role for this actor" as opposed to "lets write an interesting character and then find the best actor to play it". (However the Doctor has talked to a baby ealier in the series, so that part of the episode is not unprecedented)
um just a point, he is British, and it is a British show. so yes he would have a British accent and he doesn't put it on for interviews he is in fact "putting on" a American accent the rest of the time.
British people don't actually talk like that. His accent is exaggerated to a crazy extent.
I once heard about an interview of a British actress, playing a British character in an American film/show, who had to be given accent lessons to have a fake-British accent because otherwise some of the American audience wouldn't understand an actual British accent. (Not directly related to your post, but I thought it was interesting when I first heard it)
The latitude that the nerd crowd give google is amazing to me. If this was any other company they would be all up in arms. Google throws the geeks a bone by using a Linux kernel for the purpose of whoring out your personal data for a profit, and the geeks are falling over themselves to defend this sort of practice.
I read the blog post about it, they said they hoped that the "_nomap" would be adopted as a standard:
Finally, because other location providers will also be able to observe these opt-outs, we hope that over time the “_nomap” string will be adopted universally. This would help benefit all users by providing everyone with a unified opt-out process regardless of location provider.
(Emphasis mine)
The implication being that there are other location providers doing the same thing, so if the nerd crowd is not up in arms, perhaps it is not because Google specifically is being defended, but more because the issue is not percieved to be something that requires complaint (from my understanding of what they are doing, they are mapping wireless router names to a location on a map, for example "MyRouter" maps to "123 Fake Street" - I am sure it is a lot more complicated than that, but that is what I comprehended from their blog post).
Movie theatres are expensive as others have said, and I generally prefer to get the DVD and avoid the price + hassle, but it really bugs the heck out of me when people try to twist things to prove something thats just not true. Theres no way you can buy a new in-theatre movie as a dvd for less than the price of the cinema ticket, and its dishonest for you to try to pretend otherwise by throwing in "snacks" and "parking".
A lot of people claim that a benefit of cinema over watching a DVD is the "experience", which often includes the snacks as part of it, so including it in a comparison may make some sense. Parking maybe not so much, but is still relevent considering you wouldn't have to travel to watch a DVD.
Quite often cinema is seen as a social experience as well, so if the comparison is DVD->ticket, economies of scale will favour the DVD eventually under certain circumstances (it might be cheaper to buy a DVD and watch a film in private with a partner, for example, or for a group of friends to buy a DVD between them instead of paying for a ticket each)
I'm disappointed that seemingly most Slashdotters couldn't even be bothered to read the article HEADLINE, let alone the summary or, god forbid, the article itself.
The title for the tab I have open for this page is "Answers.com Now Only With Facebook a..."
Maybe they just read that and are making up their own words to finish the title. Although (particuarly in this case) reading half a headline isn't much better than not reading the headline at all...
Sorry, in that case I must have misunderstood the PP. I read the comment as saying "Facebook allows HTML, G+ does not, therefore G+ is worse". I do have a FB account but I do not remember seeing any custom HTML on the few non-personal pages I have visited there. Obviously not allowing such customisation is a Good Thing, of course.
I was agreeing with you that allowing user HTML on pages isn't great, and I think your interpretation of the comment is correct. I've not seen any Facebook pages with page owner added HTML either, which is what I suspect the original post was about, but wouldn't be surprised if it is possible.
i have seen somewhere a search engine that allowed one to block a site from showing again... google should implement this, users can decide what they want and dont want and google should allow that choice
I think Google did implement it a few months ago. Or at least thats what I read on slashdot, I've not used the functionality myself.
If I knew the first few letters of the app, I wouldn't need the fucking search box.
Not showing what's installed coupled with Linux devs coming up with cute names for their projects makes Unity a really, really awful interface.
I don't use the search in Unity often, but I think the description of a program is included in the search, so you don't have to remember the name of anything.
There is a way to see a list of everything that is installed, although it takes a couple more clicks to get to than it used to.
Maybe they are "denialists" because they see dishonesty coming from the Global Warming crowd. You know, like saying that "Richard Muller, Global Warming Skeptic, Now Agrees Climate Change Is Real" when Richard Muller was never a "Global Warming Skeptic". Read an interview with him HERE.
If the science is as solid as you believe it is, why would you need to lie about Richard Muller being a "Global Warming Skeptic"? Here is a quote from this "skeptic":
What I wrote them in my letter of resignation was that, if you oppose nuclear power, the U.S. will become much more heavily dependent on fossil fuels, and that this is a pollutant to the atmosphere that is very likely to lead to global warming.
Technically, in the quote he says it is "very likely", as opposed to being certain. As a scientist, he could be skeptical about his hypothesis (hence the use of the word "likely"), if he percieved it to be unproven. If he has been able to research it further to be certain, then he can stop being skeptical if he now has enough evidence to satisy his certainty.
I do agree, however, that it looks like his previous beliefs have been needlessly exagerated for the article.
I also emailed all my MEPs when the EU was debating extending copyright terms. The Greens and Lib Dems were in favour of reducing them, although we now know for certain that the Lib Dems are full of shit. The Tory MEP was in favour of an extension and as in your experience basically parroted the BMI press release.
I think I got a similar email response when I emailed about copyright terms. I said I would be very interested in reading the sources he talked about that said it was should be extended, as everything I had read previously said the opposite, so I could ensure I had as much information as possible, and double-check any of my previous sources. I didn't get another reply.
The current lot outside St. Paul's have just been evicted and will be history by the end of the week, and all the promises to ask the hard questions and have a debate by politicians are worthless. Most of the media hasn't even bothered to report what they are protesting about, other than some vague hippies-against-capitalism bullshit.
WTF? Do you live/work among the Amish or in some wierdo Puritan colony?
All of the people in those photos are decently clothed in a law-abiding fashion (by US and European laws, anyway). There are no naughty bits showing, and probably less skin exposed than by typical office garments.
The first two in particular might look (or be perceived to be) NSFW if viewed at a distance, for a brief moment. The kind of view a work colleague might have by walking behind you.
Anyway, the question though is how do police deal with this information, and how does a lawyer prevent it from being thrown out of court due to its questionable origin?
That is going to depend a lot on what country the court is in. I suspect the best bet would be to not use the list as evidence and instead use the list to see if it is possible to get a search warrant for the people on it, to try to find actual evidence. Whether a search warrant will be allowed based on a list of names found on the internet is another matter.
Well, so they took down those "porn" websites, but one has to ask, why the authorities have done nothing, preferring to sit on their backsides? Politicians or police using such sites and they want to cover it up?
My guess would be a matter of jurisdiction - can't take down sites outside their country.
Slashdot Mirror
Surely if the Swedes were willing to pay for a (potentially one-way) plane ticket for Assange....
I don't think they were. One of Assanges objections was that he asked if he was wanted for questioning, was told he wasn't, so left the country, then was expected to buy another plane ticket to come back for questioning he was originally told wasn't going to happen.
Or they could make use of videoconferencing and save themselves the cost of the tickets if there's no reason to bring him to Sweden.
This is a very rational point, I believe one that Assanges lawyers made, but was rejected for some reason.
Sort of. That's what makes the entire thing so weird. If he had just gone to Sweden and done the whole interview thing the whole case would have been dropped ages ago.
Fighting it just makes him look guilty.
I remember reading that while he was in Sweeden, he asked something along the lines of "do you need me for questioning on this, or am I ok to leave the country?", was told that he was not needed, so left (probabaly thinking that the case had been dropped so he wouldn't hear about it again). Afterwards, they changed their minds (or someone else took it upon themselves to take control of the case). I can see why he might be slightly suspicious at least. You are right, the whole thing is a bit weird.
There are lots of things someone can do that might make them look guilty*; luckily most courts require evidence.
* Some would say that encrypting communications over the internet makes someone look guilty, for example.
I would love to pay an artist for his work. Maybe they could print an email address I could Paypal some money to?
Have a look at Jamendo - the music there is all creative commons of some sort, and there is often a "support this artist" link. I think the last time I paid money for music was because I really liked something I got from Jamendo and went back to the artist's page to support them.
I've never heard anyone call it the Daily Racist, though I've often heard it called the Daily Heil, the Hate Mail and the Daily Fail.
I quite like the name "Daily Hate".
*My* brilliant idea is to have the entire side wall of the car roll up like a garage door so that people can board and detrain en masse. The problem is with the placement of the seats.
You could replace the aisle/walkway down the middle with seats, and have two walkways either side of the seats. You either have all the chairs facing one direction, or in a back-to-back arrangement. If you could configure it so that people would only get off one side of the train (this requires the platforms to be on the same side the whole journey), you would only need your new door on one side, and leave the second side as it is currently.
I like your idea, however there may be some problems with trains that are particuarly crowded (people could get pushed off at stops, and you would have to be careful lowering the door).
It's interesting you should mention that. Are icons really faster than text to recognize? I doubt it. Humans are trained to read text from the time we start school, and we're really good at it for most of us.
Most icons are going to take up less space on the screen compared to text, so you can fit more on. I suspect that, even if text is faster to read, the size benefit would probabaly win over it.
I guess there is also the idea that the same icon can be used across multiple languages, so long as the meaning is the same, without having to translate lots of buttons.
Although nowadays you do have this weird situation whereby an icon of an abstract concept is still used as an icon, but no longer used in the physical world. For example, a "save" button often uses an image of a floppy disk as the icon - there will be children (if not now, then soon) who understand that this image means to save a file, but would have never seen a floppy disk before.
(I did not even take the time to search, but I assumed Google Plus is a minor feature already retired).
You are assuming wrong as there has been some recent integrations of Google Plus with other Google services - Google Reader for example. They also added the functionality in the search bar for "+" to go to the Google Plus page for that company (it appears as one of the suggestions).
The bathos of it becomes apparent when you realize the OWS protesters live in $300,000 homes or $1500/month apartments, have been oversupplied with everything they could possibly want (quick- count how many $400 cell phones are in that picture, $100 pieces of clothing, or people with $3000 laptops. Hell, how many of those POOR kids are drinking $5 cups of coffee?) or are raging because, having accumulated massive amounts of debt getting educations of little actual value, they now suddenly realize that they actually might be held responsible for their shitty self-choices or a basic heedlessness that "good times don't go on forever"?
In a recent UK TV show (Have I got News for you), one of the panelists (a conservative MP I believe) was complaining about the protesters in London using similar words to yours ("Why are they protesting capitalist greed while drinking £5 coffee?"). Another panelist almost didn't repond because the premise was too stupid, but eventually did saying "You don't have to go back to a barter system to protest about excessive greed", or words to that effect.
Also, the logical fallacy Tu quoque seems worth mentioning here.
I am walking along a trail in the jungle. I arrive at a fork in the trail leading to two villages of Amazon tribeswomen. At the fork, there is a member of one of the two tribes, but I'm not certain which. One tribe's members always tell the truth, the other always lie. One tribe kidnaps travelers and makes them their sex slaves. The other does not.
Siri, what question should I ask this woman?
The classic example has the restriction that you can only ask one question (so if there was only one tribe member there, you would ask "if a member of the other tribe was asked the question 'which way should I go to avoid kidnapping?', what would their answer be?", and do the opposite)
Without that restriction you can ask a few control questions to determine whether they are telling the truth or lying, and then ask them about it ("what is your gender?" for example)
In one of the Order of the Stick comics, with one lier and one truth teller, someone shoots an arrow into the foot of one of them to figure out which one is the one that tells the truth by their reaction ("Why did you shoot me in the foot" vs "She did not just shoot you in the foot")
*Please* let the role be played by a female: the potential for Dr-Who-esq humour would be immense !! And of course a male "companion" !
Check out the Doctor Who sketch they did for Comic Relief a few years ago - I think someone has posted a link here somewhere already.
The recent episode about the fat bumbling idiot with the talking baby was the straw that broke the camel's back.
That was James someone (Cordon I think, I'm not sure). He was/is one of the main characters in another fairly popular series in the UK (and was in an episode in the previous Doctor Who series) , so his role was partially "special guest celebrity".
I'm not a particular fan either; the episode seemed to be more "lets write a role for this actor" as opposed to "lets write an interesting character and then find the best actor to play it". (However the Doctor has talked to a baby ealier in the series, so that part of the episode is not unprecedented)
um just a point, he is British, and it is a British show. so yes he would have a British accent and he doesn't put it on for interviews he is in fact "putting on" a American accent the rest of the time.
British people don't actually talk like that. His accent is exaggerated to a crazy extent.
I once heard about an interview of a British actress, playing a British character in an American film/show, who had to be given accent lessons to have a fake-British accent because otherwise some of the American audience wouldn't understand an actual British accent. (Not directly related to your post, but I thought it was interesting when I first heard it)
The latitude that the nerd crowd give google is amazing to me. If this was any other company they would be all up in arms. Google throws the geeks a bone by using a Linux kernel for the purpose of whoring out your personal data for a profit, and the geeks are falling over themselves to defend this sort of practice.
I read the blog post about it, they said they hoped that the "_nomap" would be adopted as a standard:
Finally, because other location providers will also be able to observe these opt-outs, we hope that over time the “_nomap” string will be adopted universally. This would help benefit all users by providing everyone with a unified opt-out process regardless of location provider.
(Emphasis mine)
The implication being that there are other location providers doing the same thing, so if the nerd crowd is not up in arms, perhaps it is not because Google specifically is being defended, but more because the issue is not percieved to be something that requires complaint (from my understanding of what they are doing, they are mapping wireless router names to a location on a map, for example "MyRouter" maps to "123 Fake Street" - I am sure it is a lot more complicated than that, but that is what I comprehended from their blog post).
False equivalencies. The US version is half water (ice).
Quite a lot of the drinks from fast food places (including McDonalds) in the UK also have a lot of ice.
Movie theatres are expensive as others have said, and I generally prefer to get the DVD and avoid the price + hassle, but it really bugs the heck out of me when people try to twist things to prove something thats just not true. Theres no way you can buy a new in-theatre movie as a dvd for less than the price of the cinema ticket, and its dishonest for you to try to pretend otherwise by throwing in "snacks" and "parking".
A lot of people claim that a benefit of cinema over watching a DVD is the "experience", which often includes the snacks as part of it, so including it in a comparison may make some sense. Parking maybe not so much, but is still relevent considering you wouldn't have to travel to watch a DVD.
Quite often cinema is seen as a social experience as well, so if the comparison is DVD->ticket, economies of scale will favour the DVD eventually under certain circumstances (it might be cheaper to buy a DVD and watch a film in private with a partner, for example, or for a group of friends to buy a DVD between them instead of paying for a ticket each)
I'm disappointed that seemingly most Slashdotters couldn't even be bothered to read the article HEADLINE, let alone the summary or, god forbid, the article itself.
The title for the tab I have open for this page is "Answers.com Now Only With Facebook a..."
Maybe they just read that and are making up their own words to finish the title. Although (particuarly in this case) reading half a headline isn't much better than not reading the headline at all...
Sorry, in that case I must have misunderstood the PP. I read the comment as saying "Facebook allows HTML, G+ does not, therefore G+ is worse". I do have a FB account but I do not remember seeing any custom HTML on the few non-personal pages I have visited there. Obviously not allowing such customisation is a Good Thing, of course.
I was agreeing with you that allowing user HTML on pages isn't great, and I think your interpretation of the comment is correct. I've not seen any Facebook pages with page owner added HTML either, which is what I suspect the original post was about, but wouldn't be surprised if it is possible.
[...] Google+ pages don't allow HTML or anything else like Facebook does. [...]
And that is a bad thing because...?
Not allowing HTML on user pages was what made Facebook a lot more appealing to people who didn't like all the HTML on user pages on MySpace.
i have seen somewhere a search engine that allowed one to block a site from showing again... google should implement this, users can decide what they want and dont want and google should allow that choice
I think Google did implement it a few months ago. Or at least thats what I read on slashdot, I've not used the functionality myself.
If I knew the first few letters of the app, I wouldn't need the fucking search box.
Not showing what's installed coupled with Linux devs coming up with cute names for their projects makes Unity a really, really awful interface.
I don't use the search in Unity often, but I think the description of a program is included in the search, so you don't have to remember the name of anything.
There is a way to see a list of everything that is installed, although it takes a couple more clicks to get to than it used to.
which is the reason why I call them "denialists".
Maybe they are "denialists" because they see dishonesty coming from the Global Warming crowd. You know, like saying that "Richard Muller, Global Warming Skeptic, Now Agrees Climate Change Is Real" when Richard Muller was never a "Global Warming Skeptic". Read an interview with him HERE.
If the science is as solid as you believe it is, why would you need to lie about Richard Muller being a "Global Warming Skeptic"? Here is a quote from this "skeptic":
What I wrote them in my letter of resignation was that, if you oppose nuclear power, the U.S. will become much more heavily dependent on fossil fuels, and that this is a pollutant to the atmosphere that is very likely to lead to global warming.
Technically, in the quote he says it is "very likely", as opposed to being certain. As a scientist, he could be skeptical about his hypothesis (hence the use of the word "likely"), if he percieved it to be unproven. If he has been able to research it further to be certain, then he can stop being skeptical if he now has enough evidence to satisy his certainty.
I do agree, however, that it looks like his previous beliefs have been needlessly exagerated for the article.
I also emailed all my MEPs when the EU was debating extending copyright terms. The Greens and Lib Dems were in favour of reducing them, although we now know for certain that the Lib Dems are full of shit. The Tory MEP was in favour of an extension and as in your experience basically parroted the BMI press release.
I think I got a similar email response when I emailed about copyright terms. I said I would be very interested in reading the sources he talked about that said it was should be extended, as everything I had read previously said the opposite, so I could ensure I had as much information as possible, and double-check any of my previous sources. I didn't get another reply.
The current lot outside St. Paul's have just been evicted and will be history by the end of the week, and all the promises to ask the hard questions and have a debate by politicians are worthless. Most of the media hasn't even bothered to report what they are protesting about, other than some vague hippies-against-capitalism bullshit.
I don't think they've been evicted yet...
St Paul's suspends legal action against Occupy London protest
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-15541127
NSFW! NSFW! NSFW!
WTF? Do you live/work among the Amish or in some wierdo Puritan colony? All of the people in those photos are decently clothed in a law-abiding fashion (by US and European laws, anyway). There are no naughty bits showing, and probably less skin exposed than by typical office garments.
The first two in particular might look (or be perceived to be) NSFW if viewed at a distance, for a brief moment. The kind of view a work colleague might have by walking behind you.
Anyway, the question though is how do police deal with this information, and how does a lawyer prevent it from being thrown out of court due to its questionable origin?
That is going to depend a lot on what country the court is in. I suspect the best bet would be to not use the list as evidence and instead use the list to see if it is possible to get a search warrant for the people on it, to try to find actual evidence. Whether a search warrant will be allowed based on a list of names found on the internet is another matter.
Well, so they took down those "porn" websites, but one has to ask, why the authorities have done nothing, preferring to sit on their backsides? Politicians or police using such sites and they want to cover it up?
My guess would be a matter of jurisdiction - can't take down sites outside their country.