Wow, I hope you never have a complaint to report to the Complaint Department! Word to the wise: the Complaint Department doesn't exist. You will be arrested.
I'm pretty sure most western countries have a complaints department for law enforcement.
Many years ago in my teenage years in New Zealand, I was chatting to random people on IRC (a pretty new protocol at the time) and there was a guy bragging about bombing a plane - specifically, putting explosives on the landing gear of the plane.
Being young and paranoid, but not yet particularly clever in the ways of the computer security world, I 'anonymously' emailed the police with information about it. My attempts at anonymity were however not good enough and a few days later the police came and took all my computer equipment. The search warrant read "Attempted murder and breach of the telecommunications act" (I still have it, along with the write up I got in the newspaper as a reminder of absurdity). Of course, I was never arrested as I had done nothing illegal.
While that all annoyed me greatly, it didn't annoy me nearly as much as them keeping my stuff for over 3 months before I got it back. When I did finally get it back, the power switch on my main system was physically broken and the HDD was formatted.
I made a complaint to the Police Complaints Authority (a government body) and they ended up writing a letter of apology. So, while complaining certainly didn't do anything useful for me, the point is that there WAS a body for me to complain to.
I'm sure it's a little more complex in countries like the US and Australia since there may be differences by state as well as the federal level to think about, but a quick Google search seems to confirm that complaints departments and/or processes do exist there also.
Oh, how I'd love for you to present said evidence, that "proves" people like my brother are mindless killing machines that do everything the government "programs" them to do...
The irony being, of course, that you just described a robot, rather than a human.
That is a serious strawman and if you think I said anything like that at all, you either lack reading comprehension or are just looking for a fight.
In case it's the former, please note that I also wrote: "Also note that I did say "a large number of soldiers" and not all. There are plenty of cases you can find of soldiers going against orders they believe to be morally reprehensible, but the fact that OTHER soldiers then do it is a testament for the argument and not against it.".
Beyond that, assuming your brother is a front line soldier that has seen combat, ask him about his combat experience. Ask him what was going through his head at the time. I'm willing to bet that he was 'focusing on the job at hand' - the training teaches soldiers to shut out their own concerns and doubts because otherwise they simply wouldn't be effective soldiers.
I get it. You care for your brother. You most likely respect him. You are quite likely proud of him and the job he does. You don't like that I said something bad about soldiers because it besmirches him. I don't know your brother nor anything about him beyond what you've said. But I wasn't talking about your brother - I was talking about soldiers in general. I was talking about what is intended by the training that they go through, and indeed is generally very successful.
It's even entirely possible your brother is one of those who would not blindly follows orders and would think for himself. But if that's the case, then by definition he's not a good soldier from the perspective of his superiors; they failed to do what they wanted as far as his training is concerned; and it might get him in to trouble one day.
because all evidence shows that the weak point always lies with the soldier that has to pull the trigger and decide to kill a fellow human being.
All evidence that I've seen shows that a large number - possibly even the majority - of soldiers have been brainwashed in to following orders unconditionally and will commit the most horrendous crimes against humanity when ordered to do so. And - even when not ordered - that same brainwashing includes training in not thinking of 'the enemy' as human, because that causes you to delay in the critical moment. So they dehumanise the enemy to the point that further atrocities can be committed even when not under orders to do so.
Note that I don't blame the soldiers themselves in a lot of these situations - they are often good people who given time to think and reason it through would not behave that way, but their training has so messed with them that some actions they'll take don't reflect on the person they are.
Also note that I did say "a large number of soldiers" and not all. There are plenty of cases you can find of soldiers going against orders they believe to be morally reprehensible, but the fact that OTHER soldiers then do it is a testament for the argument and not against it.
The key difference seems to be that a human grunt is on the ground and is able to react to the situation in the first person. A robotic grunt's behaviour is determined, entirely, by an algorithm that is of necessity written by someone who is not involved in that specific situation and therefore has to write the code for the general case.
Who says the code has to be written for the general case. It had better be a LOT more intelligent than the equivalent of a bunch of "if/then" statements.
Also, philosophically speaking, I'd say a human's decision making is just a really complex set of algorithms that we don't understand particularly well at this point. What we do know is that humans make significant mistakes with regularity, so the test isn't whether or not these autonomous systems make mistakes in difficult circumstances, but rather the ratio of mistakes compared to human agent.
Not saying I'm in favour of killbots - I'm really not. But I'm not in favour of humans killing each other either. If killing is going to be done (which it is), I'd rather go with whichever system is going to make the least mistakes and have the least side-effects.
I'd like to see Google, or Facebook or some other social media style site implement (what I'm calling) a 'Reverse Locker'
The idea is simple. It keeps stuff secret, but *only* if you log in periodically.
As well as solving the problem asked, the uses are more than you might think. For example I'd like to keep some documents safe until my death, at which point I'm happy for them to be made 'public' (such as a Last Will and Testament, or whatever)
I use deathswitch for exactly this. Because of the limitations of the free system, when I fail to log in periodically (it sends email reminders) it will send an email to an address that is then forwarded to multiple trusted people with instructions on how to retrieve my passwords. The passwords themselves aren't in the email, just 'how to figure them out'.
It's not perfect, but it covers enough of the possible scenarios that I'm happy with it. Should any of the unlikely scenarios occur where it falls down, there are probably more pressing concerns than my passwords.
and the idea that we can - in a perfect world - eliminate the need for work allowing people to concentrate on the betterment of themselves and their fellow man.
Has it occurred to you that in many cases work IS a way for people to concentrate on the betterment of themselves? Work is not some horrible thing to be eliminated or feared.
Of course that has occurred to me; but I do see how you could interpret otherwise from what I wrote. I didn't really intend to go so far down on that off-topic side path.
Generally speaking, most people do not enjoy their jobs to the point that if they had the choice of making the same money to do 'whatever they want' they would choose something other than what they're doing. That's the kind of "work" I was referring to the elimination of. The "Star Trek utopia" to use a concept that most geeks should be familiar with.
I'm not switching from gasoline until someone makes an engine that will run on distilled suffering of hippies.
Not all 'hippies' are created equal. I tend to consider myself as somewhat hippy-ish. I believe in peace, love, understanding, environmentalism, nuclear power, GMO foods, high-technology, and the idea that we can - in a perfect world - eliminate the need for work allowing people to concentrate on the betterment of themselves and their fellow man.
Note that the vast majority of 'hippies' disagree with me vehemently on nuclear power and GMO foods (and some disagree on the high-tech). From my point of view as a scientifically minded person though, I see these as being the sensible environmental low-impact choices of the present day.
As for your gas-guzzler (and mine) - I look forward to the day they no longer exist.
1. They are reading your stuff on smart phones with a screen so small if you view porn on it, you really will go blind.
...
Not all thoughtful comments have to be long. "Sorry this letter was so long but I didn't have enough time to write a shorter one." [Editing works]
Yes, this can be a problem. But I fail to see how this is my problem. While information density of language can vary (I am always astounded how marketing people in my company can talk for 20 minutes to say something I would've said in 30 seconds), there is a limit. If the information I want to convey requires 300 characters, I'll use 300 characters.
2. Get over yourself. If you want to sell books to a specific market you have to meet them on their terms or write them off.
I don't view twitter or facebook as specific markets. I view them as a way to reach a general audience (specific markets would be things like the advertisement I placed in a medical journal). And by basically giving up on twitter as I did, I did 'write off that market' (if you view it as such), so I don't see how your decision to insult me with a snarky "get over yourself" was particularly productive.
I think it's a matter of weighing the statement they made vs the action they took. Perhaps it's a cultural difference between us, but as a New Zealander myself, I believe that most other New Zealanders would pay more attention to the fact that they said, "we don't think it's harmful" than the fact that they removed it.
It is fairly clear that they removed it in order to appease the complainers and not out of any perceived harm.
If I thought the risk of false belief was higher (i.e. people paying more attention to the action than the words) then I'd complete agree with you that the action would be too much as it would spread the false belief further, causing additional problems in the future.
What's sad is the people who occasionally have something worth sharing but are so completely unable to understand the need to be polite that they can't share it effectively.
This, I agree with. But only because of the limitations and requirements of the society we're in. I think it's sad that people are unable to effectively get their point across because it means that a potential for sharing information (and therefore increasing overall human knowledge) is lost.
The fact that it benefits an argument for it to be delivered clearly and politely isn't a bad thing unless you think a society in which such things are valued at all is a desirable outcome.
I'm taking a more abstract view here and imagining a world that we don't have. If no-one took offence at the style of how something is said and instead concentrated only on what was said, I believe that it would be a better world than the one we do have. More information would be shared, people would be happier, and misunderstandings would be fewer.
I fully agree though that we don't live in such a world, and therefore politeness is definitely important.
Those parents who have lost a child must be heartbroken and grasping at anything to give some sort of meaning to their son's death.
Removing WiFi from junior classes may be senseless, but it gives these parents some sort of resolution and justification for what happened.
Just let them have this one; WiFi access isn't really necessary in junior classes anyway and they can switch it back on in a few years if needed.
I agree. I didn't mean to say the school was doing something 'bad' by taking away the WiFi. The parents are wrong, but they're also heartbroken and it's probably not going to cause any harm to remove the WiFi from these junior classes. I think the school did exactly the right thing - deny that WiFi is harmful (the truth), but take it away anyway in order to appease these people.
What he really needs to to is to grow a pair and tell them not to be so fucking stupid (or words to that effect).
While tempting to do so in this kind of situation, I believe his approach was probably more effective. If you go around insulting people, they're less likely to take you seriously or listen to your opinion in the future.
Just think of the flamebait posts here on Slashdot. Occasionally they actually make a reasonable point, but they do it in such a way that most people aren't going to actually take the time to consider the point. It's a sorry state of affairs that 'how' we say something is important rather than only 'what' we say, but it is the case for the vast majority of people and if you intend to interact with other people throughout your life, it's an important skill to learn in order to actually get what you want in life.
You'd think that as a "scientist" Mr. Peter Griffin would have heard of the Stark-Einstein of photochemical equivalence, which tells you why WiFi is harmless. It was only one of the most studied pieces of science of the 20th century. Simply saying "we have no evidence" is a bit feeble.
You'd think for a press statement designed to appease worried parents, he doesn't need to talk science that is way about most of their heads - just tell them that it's okay.
Oh gosh. This is not a very good precedent. I hope the children are taught that:
-The radiation from WIFI is the same type as what comes from the Sun, which is essential for all life on earth.
-We all emit radiation.
Thankfully, New Zealand isn't as 'backwater' and 'stupid' as the summary makes out.
From TFA:
Science Media Centre manager Peter Griffin says the death of Te Horo pupil Ethan Wyman from a brain tumour was a tragedy for his family, friends and school mates, but that to blame it on wi-fi is wrong.
Mr Griffin notes there is no evidence anywhere in peer-reviewed literature to suggest wi-fi signals pose an elevated risk of developing brain cancers.
And also:
In a statement, the Te Horo School board said it would take wi-fi out of junior classes and replace it with ethernet cable. However, wi-fi will not be removed from the senior school due to the wishes of parents who were surveyed on the issue.
The board says it shares the government's view that wi-fi is safe.
"We have sourced information from the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Health and other submissions," the board's statement says.
"Based on this information the board believes that Wi-Fi does not pose a health risk to staff or students."
So it really is just a couple of dumb people putting pressure on the school and not indicative of the school's or Ministry of Education's thoughts at all.
If it can't be said in 140 chars or less it's not worth communicating?
This really bugs me. I use facebook fairly regularly, as it's my primary method for keeping in contact with friends and family in all the different parts of the world that I've lived in or spent significant time in and suits this job very well. However over the last few years an annoying trend has popped up. People will post something interesting (in amongst the stuff I don't care so much about) and I'll write a long and thoughtful comment as a reply. The response is then "Ugh, you're so wordy", "TL;DR", "geez, I didn't need an essay", or similar.
Meaningful thoughtful statements have somehow been declared 'out of fashion' or otherwise no longer acceptable.
I also run a facebook page for the book(s) I wrote/write as well as a twitter feed. Interaction thought the facebook page is excellent; however I've basically given up on twitter as I can't really say anything useful in that small number of characters. I could in theory start my own blog, post information there and then link to it from the twitter feed, but that just seems like significant extra work compared to what I'm doing on facebook (honestly, I'd rather be spending my time writing books than promoting them).
I regularly get mod bombed for the simple act of presenting minority views or evidence that other people want to suppress.
I don't mean to sound unsympathetic, but have you considered it might be because of how you phrase the view or evidence?
I've also from time to time posted minority views or evidence, but have never been modded down because of it. In fact, I'm generally always either unmodded or modded up for all my posts.
On the occasions I've been modded down, it's usually mixed with up-mods. For example, I'll often post something only slightly interesting, watch it go up to "+5 Interesting" and than down to around +3 from a couple of "Overrated" mods. This seems fair to me.
Wording is usually the culprit when people complain about unfair downmods. You should read your post back to yourself and consider if someone may be able to misinterpret it, or assign a 'mood' or 'feeling' to it that you didn't intend.
Of course, there is always also 'reputation' to take in to account. There are probably people who see "cold fjord" and immediately want to mod down. It sucks, but it happens. Perhaps try creating a second account, post a few replies with the same viewpoint that you'd normally use but be painstakingly careful about the wording. Then, if those get modded down, you may be right; but I suspect they won't be.
I come to have fun, that means i can as well behave like a fool in company of my buds. I want them to remember this shit, not my future employers, or existing one for that matter.
While I don't disagree with you in principle - I too would be uncomfortable with someone having Google Glass on in my vicinity when I'm out enjoying myself - this is something I see a lot, and almost exclusively from residents of the USA: employers shouldn't care what you do in your off time. I find it disgusting how many people simply accept that their employer is their 'owner'.
When I released my book (see sig), my boss even showed significant interest. Several people in the company have now bought it. They know I take illegal substances from time to time. They know I have had illegal substances on me at work (last year's Christmas party was straight after work with no easy opportunity for me to go home between work and party, so I simply took my substances with me to work). They also don't care: I do my job extremely well and am praised for my work. If I did my job poorly, I'd expect to be spoken to about it. If it were because I was turning up to work high and having difficulty concentrating on work, I'd expect them to tell me to stop doing that or face disciplinary action. But as long as I do my job well, it's none of their business what I do outside of that time.
For reference, I live in Germany and work for the European head office of Konica Minolta (business equipment) as a software developer ("Software Development Supervisor" is my actual title, which means I actually spend too much time doing management stuff and not enough coding; but I'm a developer at heart and still get a decent amount of code written myself).
What I'd like to be able to do is schedule my FB posts. I just found something Christmas-funny. I'd like to post it to FB around December 20th, but what I'd actually like to do is upload it now and schedule for it to appear on my feed (erm, 'timeline') on December 20th. Or on the weekend, schedule up a bunch of funny stuff to appear throughout the week. Yeah, yeah, yeah I know there's probably some ActiveGNUPerlFoxScriptExtensionPlugIn BS that does what I want, but I just want a button in FB.
What's really annoying is that you CAN do that as a "page" but not from your private account.
I agree completely that most eBooks are horribly overpriced.
I'm an independent author (see sig). I've priced my eBook version and paperback version at a level where I receive the roughly the same profit from both. Since paperbacks cost money to print, the paperback costs more than eBook (as you'd expect).
Nevertheless, when I look at offerings from other independent authors (using the same publishing platform as I did), the eBook is generally priced almost exactly the same as the paperback! I can tell you now - if you see an eBook priced the same as the paperback and it was published by "CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform", the author is making a much larger profit on the eBook than they are on the paperback.
Also, despite my eBook being significantly cheaper, it also gets significantly less sales. The ratio at the moment in my sales is around 8:1 in favour of the paperback.
I'm not doubting your story - especially since you're someone I generally trust well on slashdot (you're my "friend" here); however:
Go on, try to edit something. It can't be done.
A little while ago (back in 2008 looking at the article history), I found this article about MFPs to be horribly weak and focused only on home devices with no mention of office or production devices at all.
Working in the MFP industry, I was able to add a lot of information and give good citations for it; so I did so. Other than the occasional spammer trying to advertise their products, none of my changes were reverted. In the cases where people were spammy, it was always almost immediately reverted back to my version.
I'm definitely not a regular wikipedia editor and haven't really done much of anything other than on that one page. So, my experience as a 'fly-by editor' was overwhelmingly positive.
Possession of a scale and drugs of almost any quantity here will get you "with intent to distribute" tacked on. An ex dealer I know said all the dealers in town have small personal safes they keep their scales in. That totally confused me until they filled me in on that minor little legal detail. (not that a safe often stops the cops, but apparently it can help)
I have a battery operated scale that goes down to 100th of a gram measurements. I do indeed use it for measuring quantities of illegal substances (generally MDMA and amphetamine; as my most preferred substance - LSD - can't accurately be measured with that kind of scale). I have never however intended to distribute the drugs at all (in the eyes of the law, probably, since 'take one and give one to my friend' technically counts as distribution; but it's not in the spirit of the law from my point of view).
The entire point of having the scales is to know how much of a substance I'm taking. Especially with the likes of MDMA, I know the exact amount required for me to have specific effects. Too much and I feel "overwhelmed"; too little and I feel myself frustrated that I'm "not quite there". Through experimentation, I know the amounts that are suitable for me in different kinds of environments. The scales help me measure out those quantities and ensure I always have a good - and safe - time.
(note that I also ensure quality/purity of substance; measuring accurate quantities of an unknown white powder would be kind of pointless)
200 gallons of LSD?! That's probably enough to trip the entire planet, let alone you personal use...
Generally liquid LSD varies in actual LSD content, but let's call it "one drop contains 100mcg", which is a common expectation.
100mcg is considered a typical dose of LSD for anyone to experience a trip (some people will trip on less; some require a little more. Also generally, for more experienced users or people wishing to have a 'heavy trip' for self-discovery or other such purposes, much higher doses are used; but we'll go with just 'experiencing a trip' for the purposes of calculation and so 100mcg is acceptable).
One 'drop' from an eyedropper is around 0.1ml (varies a lot with different eyedroppers and users, but that'll do). So, for each 0.1ml, we've got enough to get one person tripping.
A gallon contains 3785.4ml; so enough to get 37854 people tripping. 200 gallons is therefore enough for 7570800 people. A little less than the population of New York City.
Of course, if you were talking 200 'gallons' of LSD in salt form rather than liquid, it's harder to judge. I'm not quite sure about the size/volume of LSD salt crystals in relation to exact weight; I get the feeling LSD salt is probably a little more dense than water, but it also doesn't stack so perfectly and so there'll be empty space between the crystals in the container. So for the purposes of just calculating it out for fun, let's go with a 'simplistic' (and quite possibly horribly wrong) calculation and say it's 1g per ml volume as with water. In that case, 200 gallons would be enough for 7570800000 people - a half a milliard or so over the current population of the earth.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow, I hope you never have a complaint to report to the Complaint Department! Word to the wise: the Complaint Department doesn't exist. You will be arrested.
I'm pretty sure most western countries have a complaints department for law enforcement.
Many years ago in my teenage years in New Zealand, I was chatting to random people on IRC (a pretty new protocol at the time) and there was a guy bragging about bombing a plane - specifically, putting explosives on the landing gear of the plane.
Being young and paranoid, but not yet particularly clever in the ways of the computer security world, I 'anonymously' emailed the police with information about it. My attempts at anonymity were however not good enough and a few days later the police came and took all my computer equipment. The search warrant read "Attempted murder and breach of the telecommunications act" (I still have it, along with the write up I got in the newspaper as a reminder of absurdity). Of course, I was never arrested as I had done nothing illegal.
While that all annoyed me greatly, it didn't annoy me nearly as much as them keeping my stuff for over 3 months before I got it back. When I did finally get it back, the power switch on my main system was physically broken and the HDD was formatted.
I made a complaint to the Police Complaints Authority (a government body) and they ended up writing a letter of apology. So, while complaining certainly didn't do anything useful for me, the point is that there WAS a body for me to complain to.
I'm sure it's a little more complex in countries like the US and Australia since there may be differences by state as well as the federal level to think about, but a quick Google search seems to confirm that complaints departments and/or processes do exist there also.
Oh, how I'd love for you to present said evidence, that "proves" people like my brother are mindless killing machines that do everything the government "programs" them to do...
The irony being, of course, that you just described a robot, rather than a human.
That is a serious strawman and if you think I said anything like that at all, you either lack reading comprehension or are just looking for a fight.
In case it's the former, please note that I also wrote: "Also note that I did say "a large number of soldiers" and not all. There are plenty of cases you can find of soldiers going against orders they believe to be morally reprehensible, but the fact that OTHER soldiers then do it is a testament for the argument and not against it.".
Beyond that, assuming your brother is a front line soldier that has seen combat, ask him about his combat experience. Ask him what was going through his head at the time. I'm willing to bet that he was 'focusing on the job at hand' - the training teaches soldiers to shut out their own concerns and doubts because otherwise they simply wouldn't be effective soldiers.
I get it. You care for your brother. You most likely respect him. You are quite likely proud of him and the job he does. You don't like that I said something bad about soldiers because it besmirches him. I don't know your brother nor anything about him beyond what you've said. But I wasn't talking about your brother - I was talking about soldiers in general. I was talking about what is intended by the training that they go through, and indeed is generally very successful.
It's even entirely possible your brother is one of those who would not blindly follows orders and would think for himself. But if that's the case, then by definition he's not a good soldier from the perspective of his superiors; they failed to do what they wanted as far as his training is concerned; and it might get him in to trouble one day.
because all evidence shows that the weak point always lies with the soldier that has to pull the trigger and decide to kill a fellow human being.
All evidence that I've seen shows that a large number - possibly even the majority - of soldiers have been brainwashed in to following orders unconditionally and will commit the most horrendous crimes against humanity when ordered to do so. And - even when not ordered - that same brainwashing includes training in not thinking of 'the enemy' as human, because that causes you to delay in the critical moment. So they dehumanise the enemy to the point that further atrocities can be committed even when not under orders to do so.
Note that I don't blame the soldiers themselves in a lot of these situations - they are often good people who given time to think and reason it through would not behave that way, but their training has so messed with them that some actions they'll take don't reflect on the person they are.
Also note that I did say "a large number of soldiers" and not all. There are plenty of cases you can find of soldiers going against orders they believe to be morally reprehensible, but the fact that OTHER soldiers then do it is a testament for the argument and not against it.
The key difference seems to be that a human grunt is on the ground and is able to react to the situation in the first person. A robotic grunt's behaviour is determined, entirely, by an algorithm that is of necessity written by someone who is not involved in that specific situation and therefore has to write the code for the general case.
Who says the code has to be written for the general case. It had better be a LOT more intelligent than the equivalent of a bunch of "if/then" statements.
Also, philosophically speaking, I'd say a human's decision making is just a really complex set of algorithms that we don't understand particularly well at this point. What we do know is that humans make significant mistakes with regularity, so the test isn't whether or not these autonomous systems make mistakes in difficult circumstances, but rather the ratio of mistakes compared to human agent.
Not saying I'm in favour of killbots - I'm really not. But I'm not in favour of humans killing each other either. If killing is going to be done (which it is), I'd rather go with whichever system is going to make the least mistakes and have the least side-effects.
I'd like to see Google, or Facebook or some other social media style site implement (what I'm calling) a 'Reverse Locker'
The idea is simple. It keeps stuff secret, but *only* if you log in periodically.
As well as solving the problem asked, the uses are more than you might think. For example I'd like to keep some documents safe until my death, at which point I'm happy for them to be made 'public' (such as a Last Will and Testament, or whatever)
I use deathswitch for exactly this. Because of the limitations of the free system, when I fail to log in periodically (it sends email reminders) it will send an email to an address that is then forwarded to multiple trusted people with instructions on how to retrieve my passwords. The passwords themselves aren't in the email, just 'how to figure them out'.
It's not perfect, but it covers enough of the possible scenarios that I'm happy with it. Should any of the unlikely scenarios occur where it falls down, there are probably more pressing concerns than my passwords.
and the idea that we can - in a perfect world - eliminate the need for work allowing people to concentrate on the betterment of themselves and their fellow man.
Has it occurred to you that in many cases work IS a way for people to concentrate on the betterment of themselves? Work is not some horrible thing to be eliminated or feared.
Of course that has occurred to me; but I do see how you could interpret otherwise from what I wrote. I didn't really intend to go so far down on that off-topic side path.
Generally speaking, most people do not enjoy their jobs to the point that if they had the choice of making the same money to do 'whatever they want' they would choose something other than what they're doing. That's the kind of "work" I was referring to the elimination of. The "Star Trek utopia" to use a concept that most geeks should be familiar with.
I'm not switching from gasoline until someone makes an engine that will run on distilled suffering of hippies.
Not all 'hippies' are created equal. I tend to consider myself as somewhat hippy-ish. I believe in peace, love, understanding, environmentalism, nuclear power, GMO foods, high-technology, and the idea that we can - in a perfect world - eliminate the need for work allowing people to concentrate on the betterment of themselves and their fellow man.
Note that the vast majority of 'hippies' disagree with me vehemently on nuclear power and GMO foods (and some disagree on the high-tech). From my point of view as a scientifically minded person though, I see these as being the sensible environmental low-impact choices of the present day.
As for your gas-guzzler (and mine) - I look forward to the day they no longer exist.
1. They are reading your stuff on smart phones with a screen so small if you view porn on it, you really will go blind.
...
Not all thoughtful comments have to be long. "Sorry this letter was so long but I didn't have enough time to write a shorter one." [Editing works]
Yes, this can be a problem. But I fail to see how this is my problem. While information density of language can vary (I am always astounded how marketing people in my company can talk for 20 minutes to say something I would've said in 30 seconds), there is a limit. If the information I want to convey requires 300 characters, I'll use 300 characters.
2. Get over yourself. If you want to sell books to a specific market you have to meet them on their terms or write them off.
I don't view twitter or facebook as specific markets. I view them as a way to reach a general audience (specific markets would be things like the advertisement I placed in a medical journal). And by basically giving up on twitter as I did, I did 'write off that market' (if you view it as such), so I don't see how your decision to insult me with a snarky "get over yourself" was particularly productive.
I think it's a matter of weighing the statement they made vs the action they took. Perhaps it's a cultural difference between us, but as a New Zealander myself, I believe that most other New Zealanders would pay more attention to the fact that they said, "we don't think it's harmful" than the fact that they removed it.
It is fairly clear that they removed it in order to appease the complainers and not out of any perceived harm.
If I thought the risk of false belief was higher (i.e. people paying more attention to the action than the words) then I'd complete agree with you that the action would be too much as it would spread the false belief further, causing additional problems in the future.
What's sad is the people who occasionally have something worth sharing but are so completely unable to understand the need to be polite that they can't share it effectively.
This, I agree with. But only because of the limitations and requirements of the society we're in. I think it's sad that people are unable to effectively get their point across because it means that a potential for sharing information (and therefore increasing overall human knowledge) is lost.
The fact that it benefits an argument for it to be delivered clearly and politely isn't a bad thing unless you think a society in which such things are valued at all is a desirable outcome.
I'm taking a more abstract view here and imagining a world that we don't have. If no-one took offence at the style of how something is said and instead concentrated only on what was said, I believe that it would be a better world than the one we do have. More information would be shared, people would be happier, and misunderstandings would be fewer.
I fully agree though that we don't live in such a world, and therefore politeness is definitely important.
Those parents who have lost a child must be heartbroken and grasping at anything to give some sort of meaning to their son's death. Removing WiFi from junior classes may be senseless, but it gives these parents some sort of resolution and justification for what happened. Just let them have this one; WiFi access isn't really necessary in junior classes anyway and they can switch it back on in a few years if needed.
I agree. I didn't mean to say the school was doing something 'bad' by taking away the WiFi. The parents are wrong, but they're also heartbroken and it's probably not going to cause any harm to remove the WiFi from these junior classes. I think the school did exactly the right thing - deny that WiFi is harmful (the truth), but take it away anyway in order to appease these people.
What he really needs to to is to grow a pair and tell them not to be so fucking stupid (or words to that effect).
While tempting to do so in this kind of situation, I believe his approach was probably more effective. If you go around insulting people, they're less likely to take you seriously or listen to your opinion in the future.
Just think of the flamebait posts here on Slashdot. Occasionally they actually make a reasonable point, but they do it in such a way that most people aren't going to actually take the time to consider the point. It's a sorry state of affairs that 'how' we say something is important rather than only 'what' we say, but it is the case for the vast majority of people and if you intend to interact with other people throughout your life, it's an important skill to learn in order to actually get what you want in life.
You'd think that as a "scientist" Mr. Peter Griffin would have heard of the Stark-Einstein of photochemical equivalence, which tells you why WiFi is harmless. It was only one of the most studied pieces of science of the 20th century. Simply saying "we have no evidence" is a bit feeble.
You'd think for a press statement designed to appease worried parents, he doesn't need to talk science that is way about most of their heads - just tell them that it's okay.
Oh gosh. This is not a very good precedent. I hope the children are taught that: -The radiation from WIFI is the same type as what comes from the Sun, which is essential for all life on earth. -We all emit radiation.
Thankfully, New Zealand isn't as 'backwater' and 'stupid' as the summary makes out.
From TFA:
Science Media Centre manager Peter Griffin says the death of Te Horo pupil Ethan Wyman from a brain tumour was a tragedy for his family, friends and school mates, but that to blame it on wi-fi is wrong.
Mr Griffin notes there is no evidence anywhere in peer-reviewed literature to suggest wi-fi signals pose an elevated risk of developing brain cancers.
And also:
In a statement, the Te Horo School board said it would take wi-fi out of junior classes and replace it with ethernet cable. However, wi-fi will not be removed from the senior school due to the wishes of parents who were surveyed on the issue.
The board says it shares the government's view that wi-fi is safe.
"We have sourced information from the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Health and other submissions," the board's statement says.
"Based on this information the board believes that Wi-Fi does not pose a health risk to staff or students."
So it really is just a couple of dumb people putting pressure on the school and not indicative of the school's or Ministry of Education's thoughts at all.
If it can't be said in 140 chars or less it's not worth communicating?
This really bugs me. I use facebook fairly regularly, as it's my primary method for keeping in contact with friends and family in all the different parts of the world that I've lived in or spent significant time in and suits this job very well. However over the last few years an annoying trend has popped up. People will post something interesting (in amongst the stuff I don't care so much about) and I'll write a long and thoughtful comment as a reply. The response is then "Ugh, you're so wordy", "TL;DR", "geez, I didn't need an essay", or similar.
Meaningful thoughtful statements have somehow been declared 'out of fashion' or otherwise no longer acceptable.
I also run a facebook page for the book(s) I wrote/write as well as a twitter feed. Interaction thought the facebook page is excellent; however I've basically given up on twitter as I can't really say anything useful in that small number of characters. I could in theory start my own blog, post information there and then link to it from the twitter feed, but that just seems like significant extra work compared to what I'm doing on facebook (honestly, I'd rather be spending my time writing books than promoting them).
I have two circles, ignoramuses and smarty-pants. I haven't yet found anyone who cannot be classified thus.
I believe that says more about you than it does about other people...
I regularly get mod bombed for the simple act of presenting minority views or evidence that other people want to suppress.
I don't mean to sound unsympathetic, but have you considered it might be because of how you phrase the view or evidence?
I've also from time to time posted minority views or evidence, but have never been modded down because of it. In fact, I'm generally always either unmodded or modded up for all my posts.
On the occasions I've been modded down, it's usually mixed with up-mods. For example, I'll often post something only slightly interesting, watch it go up to "+5 Interesting" and than down to around +3 from a couple of "Overrated" mods. This seems fair to me.
Wording is usually the culprit when people complain about unfair downmods. You should read your post back to yourself and consider if someone may be able to misinterpret it, or assign a 'mood' or 'feeling' to it that you didn't intend.
Of course, there is always also 'reputation' to take in to account. There are probably people who see "cold fjord" and immediately want to mod down. It sucks, but it happens. Perhaps try creating a second account, post a few replies with the same viewpoint that you'd normally use but be painstakingly careful about the wording. Then, if those get modded down, you may be right; but I suspect they won't be.
I come to have fun, that means i can as well behave like a fool in company of my buds. I want them to remember this shit, not my future employers, or existing one for that matter.
While I don't disagree with you in principle - I too would be uncomfortable with someone having Google Glass on in my vicinity when I'm out enjoying myself - this is something I see a lot, and almost exclusively from residents of the USA: employers shouldn't care what you do in your off time. I find it disgusting how many people simply accept that their employer is their 'owner'.
When I released my book (see sig), my boss even showed significant interest. Several people in the company have now bought it. They know I take illegal substances from time to time. They know I have had illegal substances on me at work (last year's Christmas party was straight after work with no easy opportunity for me to go home between work and party, so I simply took my substances with me to work). They also don't care: I do my job extremely well and am praised for my work. If I did my job poorly, I'd expect to be spoken to about it. If it were because I was turning up to work high and having difficulty concentrating on work, I'd expect them to tell me to stop doing that or face disciplinary action. But as long as I do my job well, it's none of their business what I do outside of that time.
For reference, I live in Germany and work for the European head office of Konica Minolta (business equipment) as a software developer ("Software Development Supervisor" is my actual title, which means I actually spend too much time doing management stuff and not enough coding; but I'm a developer at heart and still get a decent amount of code written myself).
What I'd like to be able to do is schedule my FB posts. I just found something Christmas-funny. I'd like to post it to FB around December 20th, but what I'd actually like to do is upload it now and schedule for it to appear on my feed (erm, 'timeline') on December 20th. Or on the weekend, schedule up a bunch of funny stuff to appear throughout the week. Yeah, yeah, yeah I know there's probably some ActiveGNUPerlFoxScriptExtensionPlugIn BS that does what I want, but I just want a button in FB.
What's really annoying is that you CAN do that as a "page" but not from your private account.
Example here.
I agree completely that most eBooks are horribly overpriced.
I'm an independent author (see sig). I've priced my eBook version and paperback version at a level where I receive the roughly the same profit from both. Since paperbacks cost money to print, the paperback costs more than eBook (as you'd expect).
Nevertheless, when I look at offerings from other independent authors (using the same publishing platform as I did), the eBook is generally priced almost exactly the same as the paperback! I can tell you now - if you see an eBook priced the same as the paperback and it was published by "CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform", the author is making a much larger profit on the eBook than they are on the paperback.
Also, despite my eBook being significantly cheaper, it also gets significantly less sales. The ratio at the moment in my sales is around 8:1 in favour of the paperback.
I'm not doubting your story - especially since you're someone I generally trust well on slashdot (you're my "friend" here); however:
Go on, try to edit something. It can't be done.
A little while ago (back in 2008 looking at the article history), I found this article about MFPs to be horribly weak and focused only on home devices with no mention of office or production devices at all.
Working in the MFP industry, I was able to add a lot of information and give good citations for it; so I did so. Other than the occasional spammer trying to advertise their products, none of my changes were reverted. In the cases where people were spammy, it was always almost immediately reverted back to my version.
I'm definitely not a regular wikipedia editor and haven't really done much of anything other than on that one page. So, my experience as a 'fly-by editor' was overwhelmingly positive.
Possession of a scale and drugs of almost any quantity here will get you "with intent to distribute" tacked on. An ex dealer I know said all the dealers in town have small personal safes they keep their scales in. That totally confused me until they filled me in on that minor little legal detail. (not that a safe often stops the cops, but apparently it can help)
I have a battery operated scale that goes down to 100th of a gram measurements. I do indeed use it for measuring quantities of illegal substances (generally MDMA and amphetamine; as my most preferred substance - LSD - can't accurately be measured with that kind of scale). I have never however intended to distribute the drugs at all (in the eyes of the law, probably, since 'take one and give one to my friend' technically counts as distribution; but it's not in the spirit of the law from my point of view).
The entire point of having the scales is to know how much of a substance I'm taking. Especially with the likes of MDMA, I know the exact amount required for me to have specific effects. Too much and I feel "overwhelmed"; too little and I feel myself frustrated that I'm "not quite there". Through experimentation, I know the amounts that are suitable for me in different kinds of environments. The scales help me measure out those quantities and ensure I always have a good - and safe - time.
(note that I also ensure quality/purity of substance; measuring accurate quantities of an unknown white powder would be kind of pointless)
Reasonably good guessing on my part then. Thanks for the link!
200 gallons of LSD?! That's probably enough to trip the entire planet, let alone you personal use...
Generally liquid LSD varies in actual LSD content, but let's call it "one drop contains 100mcg", which is a common expectation.
100mcg is considered a typical dose of LSD for anyone to experience a trip (some people will trip on less; some require a little more. Also generally, for more experienced users or people wishing to have a 'heavy trip' for self-discovery or other such purposes, much higher doses are used; but we'll go with just 'experiencing a trip' for the purposes of calculation and so 100mcg is acceptable).
One 'drop' from an eyedropper is around 0.1ml (varies a lot with different eyedroppers and users, but that'll do). So, for each 0.1ml, we've got enough to get one person tripping.
A gallon contains 3785.4ml; so enough to get 37854 people tripping. 200 gallons is therefore enough for 7570800 people. A little less than the population of New York City.
Of course, if you were talking 200 'gallons' of LSD in salt form rather than liquid, it's harder to judge. I'm not quite sure about the size/volume of LSD salt crystals in relation to exact weight; I get the feeling LSD salt is probably a little more dense than water, but it also doesn't stack so perfectly and so there'll be empty space between the crystals in the container. So for the purposes of just calculating it out for fun, let's go with a 'simplistic' (and quite possibly horribly wrong) calculation and say it's 1g per ml volume as with water. In that case, 200 gallons would be enough for 7570800000 people - a half a milliard or so over the current population of the earth.
While they may identify themselves as muslim, muslims would identify them as infadels.
And while my wife identifies as Christian, "Christians" would identify her as as apostate.
See how that works?