pushing congress to increase non-defensive R&D spending to 3% of the U.S. GDP
3% of GDP sounds like a hell of a lot. It works out to 452 billion. I hope TFS misplaced a decimal point or something because otherwise the president is a stranger to reason.
It's a rare individual who would turn down a chance to get fame and fortune for doing a job he's bad at. Especially when the consequences are as mild as a bad movie. I mean, it's not as if the guy is flying passenger airlines or designing tall buildings.
In other words, if some producer said to me, "Sir Garlon, I will give you a gazillion dollars, lots of babes, sportscars, etc. to be in my movies because you're a natural star, son!" you would have some more bad movies coming your way because I would jump at the chance, and I would choose to believe the producer even though he was lying when he said I didn't suck.
Actually, a 70-year-old Han Solo sounds like an interesting character. I wonder where the hero of the rebellion would end up, 40 years later. If the screenwriters have the creativity and freedom to actually develop the character, that is. More likely we'll see a 70-year-old version of exactly the same 30-year-old smuggler, which would be a sad joke.
Don't hate the playa, hate the game. Bad actors don't ruin movies -- producers who cast bad actors ruin movies. (And it's not Mr. LeBeouf's fault his parents named him Shia!)
There is a widespread belief in the US that everyone should go to college. There are two problems with this. First, the economy has a certain need for skills like carpentry or auto repair. College, with some exceptions, doesn't teach those. Second, not everyone is prepared for college, due to lack of motivation or aptitude or due to a failure of secondary education.
What I think you're seeing is that these unprepared students are being channeled into the university system. Two generations ago they might have gone to secretarial school or plumbing school or what have you and then into the workforce. One generation ago there was a movement for vocational education in the US to move that kind of training into high school and get the non-college-ready students career-ready instead. For reasons I don't understand, vocational programs first became a dumping ground for students with learning disabilities and/or behavior problems, and then were de-funded. This leaves us with little middle ground between ceasing education at high school, and four-year universities.
At the same time, high schools have been struggling to keep their dropout rates down and to impart basic literacy to their graduates. They're frantic to minimally educate the bottom quartile of students. Given limited resources (and, often, a statutory requirement to spend disproportionately on special-needs students), they're just doing triage. For those students who do go on to college, there seems to be an implicit expectation that high school doesn't need to make them perfect: their deficiencies can be corrected later, in college.
Back two generations ago, a college would take a weak high-school graduate and just reject her application, and she'd shrug and go on to a (perhaps perfectly rewarding) career in hairdressing or on an assembly line. Now, with the expectation that college is for everyone, economic forces ensure that there is a college that will accept such a student.
When everyone is expected to go to college, college becomes the new high school.
Interestingly, there is a lot of political will to make college accessible, but much less to put some teeth back into the high-school curriculum so a diploma actually means something.
Would anyone here take a 10% cut in pay? Yet we gladly pass sales taxes that do the same thing.
There is no sales tax on the things I spend the bulk of my income on: rent/real estate, investments, groceries, utilities, medical bills. I'd be surprised if more than 1% of my net income goes to sales tax. If sales tax is significantly affecting you, then you're spending a lot more money than you probably have to.
The U.S. should go back to its roots and use tariffs as the only source of revenue.
Yeah, let's go back to having no standing army, too. If you can find ten voters in the same Congressional district who support those proposals, I'd also be surprised.
There's no scientific data to support any position on the subject
I am not sure scientific data is the right basis for a position on this issue. The issue both sides are arguing is whether the choice for women to appear in porn is or can be a free choice in a meaningful way.
"What is freedom?" and "how can we have it?" are questions that are not amenable to scientific analysis.
For the record, I think banning porn because some performers are coerced/exploited is as stupid as banning mortgages because predatory lending happened. And by that I don't mean to imply blaming the victim, but rather that one should go after the bad apples who are duping vulnerable people.
They wont work with hackers, they wont let hackers help them without threatening to ruin their lives or using harsh bullying tactics.
For certain arms of the US government, what you're saying is probably true. The Department of Justice is clearly taking a hard line. The Department of Defense, though, has shown some interest in recruiting hackers. This is an old story now, but Mudge is currently a program manager in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
The real reason for wanting privacy is to not be able to be singled out.
You can't control who will single you out, or for what. If I am someone who judges people harshly based on X, then I only care whether you do/have done X, or not. I don't care how many other people have done X, because I am looking at *you* and judging you based on X.
So the fact that 75% of people have done X is irrelevant, and the fact that you have done 93 other things that are mildly embarrassing is irrelevant. If X, then I treat you badly.
Congratulations on meta-funny post! This is funny from at least three points of view: the programmer's view of the IT cloud, the atheist's view of religion, and the Christian's view of prayer.
Are you familiar with Eric Mazur's research in physics education? He's not interested in technology as an end in itself, but in developing more effective techniques for the teaching of science. Technology has a role. I saw him speak about this work about 10 years ago and it was compelling. Too bad his group's Web site seems to be missing links to most of his papers, but the short blurbs there give an idea of his findings.
My impression is that soft drink and junk food consumption is inversely related to income. Older and more educated people pay more attention to health (and also tend to make more money). Younger and less educated people are more susceptible to the (very powerful) forces of marketing, which make sure to offer them a selection of very tasty junk food/beverages laden with sugar, fat, preservatives, etc.
The movie "Super Size Me" provides a good introduction to the role marketing has in promoting less-healthful foods.
The entire article and half the poeople posting are completely clueless.
Probably true, but saying so doesn't make you credible... or right. This is Slashdot. Lots of people call someone "clueless" without necessarily having a clue themselves. You'd get more people to read and think about your posts if you let the strength of your argument stand on its own.
'Think about it â" could we someday see a scenario where American forces at sea with a fixed amount of defensive countermeasures facing an enemy with large numbers of cruise and ballistic weapons that have the potential to simply overwhelm them?
This is the Cold War scenario with a couple of string substitutions: s/land/sea/g and s/artillery/missiles/g. The US spent over 40 years developing strategies to counter that scenario. Rest assured, they have a smart answer, or rather several of them. I believe a nuclear first strike is on the short list of possibilities.
I suspect the problem of establishing interoperability among the government agencies is harder than it sounds. The DoD has been working on getting their stovepiped systems to talk to one another for 20 years. Remember the big push after 9/11 to get all the first responders talking on the same radio frequencies? Hundreds of millions spent, and still no results. So "incompatible computer systems" doesn't sound to me like a minor hurdle that can be overcome with a couple years' R&D. It sounds more to me like "doomed from the outset."
Possibly our best defense against Big Brother is that the government adopted all its major IT systems before the Internet was a household word.
Given a choice between choosing inferior (old and/or low-budget) DRM-free games and becoming Valve's bitch, I choose the inferior games. They're good enough for me.
I bought a couple of games from Steam before I wised up, but I've spent more time begging Valve's tech support to pretty please let me play the games I bought than I have actually playing them.
DRM opponents basically won in the music industry, and if we would stand up with regard to games, we could win there too.
Seriously, the charge is computer intrusion and aggravated identity theft. That seems appropriate. To me, 5-10 years in the federal pen sounds about right, with the usual caveat that he'd be eligible for parole after about 3. Three years in the slammer is a big deal. However, I also think this suspect should be charged with a sex crime and, if convicted, listed as a Level 3 sex offender. I do not know whether or when someone can get off the sex-offender registry, but if these charges are proved (innocent until proven guilty), then "never" sounds good in his case.
He's saying, essentially, the victim deserved to be victimized because the nude photos exist. When the victim is a woman, that's routine. "If she didn't want to be sexually harassed, she shouldn't have dressed that way," etc. So it's a repetition of a well-established sexist trope.
I didn't give him the benefit of the doubt that he would say the same thing about men, because I have never before heard anyone say something like that about men.
I hate that the flawed system actually makes me support people like Gary Kazaryan.
It doesn't sound like you support Gary Kazaryan. It sounds more like you support justice for the accused, which is praiseworthy. Anyone who *doesn't* support justice for the accused, has a flawed understanding of "justice." So you're clearly not in that category.
Slashdot Mirror
3% of GDP sounds like a hell of a lot. It works out to 452 billion. I hope TFS misplaced a decimal point or something because otherwise the president is a stranger to reason.
Says the guy who can't do it. ;-)
It's a rare individual who would turn down a chance to get fame and fortune for doing a job he's bad at. Especially when the consequences are as mild as a bad movie. I mean, it's not as if the guy is flying passenger airlines or designing tall buildings.
In other words, if some producer said to me, "Sir Garlon, I will give you a gazillion dollars, lots of babes, sportscars, etc. to be in my movies because you're a natural star, son!" you would have some more bad movies coming your way because I would jump at the chance, and I would choose to believe the producer even though he was lying when he said I didn't suck.
But I agree with you about the dumb name.
Actually, a 70-year-old Han Solo sounds like an interesting character. I wonder where the hero of the rebellion would end up, 40 years later. If the screenwriters have the creativity and freedom to actually develop the character, that is. More likely we'll see a 70-year-old version of exactly the same 30-year-old smuggler, which would be a sad joke.
Don't hate the playa, hate the game. Bad actors don't ruin movies -- producers who cast bad actors ruin movies. (And it's not Mr. LeBeouf's fault his parents named him Shia!)
There is a widespread belief in the US that everyone should go to college. There are two problems with this. First, the economy has a certain need for skills like carpentry or auto repair. College, with some exceptions, doesn't teach those. Second, not everyone is prepared for college, due to lack of motivation or aptitude or due to a failure of secondary education.
What I think you're seeing is that these unprepared students are being channeled into the university system. Two generations ago they might have gone to secretarial school or plumbing school or what have you and then into the workforce. One generation ago there was a movement for vocational education in the US to move that kind of training into high school and get the non-college-ready students career-ready instead. For reasons I don't understand, vocational programs first became a dumping ground for students with learning disabilities and/or behavior problems, and then were de-funded. This leaves us with little middle ground between ceasing education at high school, and four-year universities.
At the same time, high schools have been struggling to keep their dropout rates down and to impart basic literacy to their graduates. They're frantic to minimally educate the bottom quartile of students. Given limited resources (and, often, a statutory requirement to spend disproportionately on special-needs students), they're just doing triage. For those students who do go on to college, there seems to be an implicit expectation that high school doesn't need to make them perfect: their deficiencies can be corrected later, in college.
Back two generations ago, a college would take a weak high-school graduate and just reject her application, and she'd shrug and go on to a (perhaps perfectly rewarding) career in hairdressing or on an assembly line. Now, with the expectation that college is for everyone, economic forces ensure that there is a college that will accept such a student.
When everyone is expected to go to college, college becomes the new high school.
Interestingly, there is a lot of political will to make college accessible, but much less to put some teeth back into the high-school curriculum so a diploma actually means something.
There is no sales tax on the things I spend the bulk of my income on: rent/real estate, investments, groceries, utilities, medical bills. I'd be surprised if more than 1% of my net income goes to sales tax. If sales tax is significantly affecting you, then you're spending a lot more money than you probably have to.
Yeah, let's go back to having no standing army, too. If you can find ten voters in the same Congressional district who support those proposals, I'd also be surprised.
On the contrary, Google knows exactly what privacy is, and their entire business model is built around making sure you don't have it.
I am not sure scientific data is the right basis for a position on this issue. The issue both sides are arguing is whether the choice for women to appear in porn is or can be a free choice in a meaningful way.
"What is freedom?" and "how can we have it?" are questions that are not amenable to scientific analysis.
For the record, I think banning porn because some performers are coerced/exploited is as stupid as banning mortgages because predatory lending happened. And by that I don't mean to imply blaming the victim, but rather that one should go after the bad apples who are duping vulnerable people.
Just for the sake of argument -- how can you be sure about that?
For certain arms of the US government, what you're saying is probably true. The Department of Justice is clearly taking a hard line. The Department of Defense, though, has shown some interest in recruiting hackers. This is an old story now, but Mudge is currently a program manager in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
You can't control who will single you out, or for what. If I am someone who judges people harshly based on X, then I only care whether you do/have done X, or not. I don't care how many other people have done X, because I am looking at *you* and judging you based on X.
So the fact that 75% of people have done X is irrelevant, and the fact that you have done 93 other things that are mildly embarrassing is irrelevant. If X, then I treat you badly.
That is how discrimination works.
Depends on whether you attack the scammer, or the victim.
Congratulations on meta-funny post! This is funny from at least three points of view: the programmer's view of the IT cloud, the atheist's view of religion, and the Christian's view of prayer.
Are you familiar with Eric Mazur's research in physics education? He's not interested in technology as an end in itself, but in developing more effective techniques for the teaching of science. Technology has a role. I saw him speak about this work about 10 years ago and it was compelling. Too bad his group's Web site seems to be missing links to most of his papers, but the short blurbs there give an idea of his findings.
My impression is that soft drink and junk food consumption is inversely related to income. Older and more educated people pay more attention to health (and also tend to make more money). Younger and less educated people are more susceptible to the (very powerful) forces of marketing, which make sure to offer them a selection of very tasty junk food/beverages laden with sugar, fat, preservatives, etc.
The movie "Super Size Me" provides a good introduction to the role marketing has in promoting less-healthful foods.
So abrasive atheists can whore for karma by railing against religion.
Probably true, but saying so doesn't make you credible ... or right. This is Slashdot. Lots of people call someone "clueless" without necessarily having a clue themselves. You'd get more people to read and think about your posts if you let the strength of your argument stand on its own.
This is the Cold War scenario with a couple of string substitutions: s/land/sea/g and s/artillery/missiles/g. The US spent over 40 years developing strategies to counter that scenario. Rest assured, they have a smart answer, or rather several of them. I believe a nuclear first strike is on the short list of possibilities.
I suspect the problem of establishing interoperability among the government agencies is harder than it sounds. The DoD has been working on getting their stovepiped systems to talk to one another for 20 years. Remember the big push after 9/11 to get all the first responders talking on the same radio frequencies? Hundreds of millions spent, and still no results. So "incompatible computer systems" doesn't sound to me like a minor hurdle that can be overcome with a couple years' R&D. It sounds more to me like "doomed from the outset."
Possibly our best defense against Big Brother is that the government adopted all its major IT systems before the Internet was a household word.
If it's stupid, and works, then it ain't stupid.
Given a choice between choosing inferior (old and/or low-budget) DRM-free games and becoming Valve's bitch, I choose the inferior games. They're good enough for me.
I bought a couple of games from Steam before I wised up, but I've spent more time begging Valve's tech support to pretty please let me play the games I bought than I have actually playing them.
DRM opponents basically won in the music industry, and if we would stand up with regard to games, we could win there too.
Seriously, the charge is computer intrusion and aggravated identity theft. That seems appropriate. To me, 5-10 years in the federal pen sounds about right, with the usual caveat that he'd be eligible for parole after about 3. Three years in the slammer is a big deal. However, I also think this suspect should be charged with a sex crime and, if convicted, listed as a Level 3 sex offender. I do not know whether or when someone can get off the sex-offender registry, but if these charges are proved (innocent until proven guilty), then "never" sounds good in his case.
He's saying, essentially, the victim deserved to be victimized because the nude photos exist. When the victim is a woman, that's routine. "If she didn't want to be sexually harassed, she shouldn't have dressed that way," etc. So it's a repetition of a well-established sexist trope.
I didn't give him the benefit of the doubt that he would say the same thing about men, because I have never before heard anyone say something like that about men.
It doesn't sound like you support Gary Kazaryan. It sounds more like you support justice for the accused, which is praiseworthy. Anyone who *doesn't* support justice for the accused, has a flawed understanding of "justice." So you're clearly not in that category.