Yes, but homo sapiens did not evolve in an environment with mass availability of processed foods. To a certain degree, we evolved to be opportunistic eaters. Agriculture, chemistry and other technology have changed the environment so rapidly that evolution cannot possibly keep up.
I used to believe the idea of eat less/exercise more but that's only part of the picture. Counting calories to lose weight is a fool's errand. Exceed your energy needs by 100 calories a day and you pack on 10 pounds a year.
I now believe the key is to eat less crap (especially simple carbs) and more natural foods so that your body more naturally regulates appetite.
One thing's for certain. The whole "eat more carbs and less fats" message was total BS. Whether it was spread through ignorance or malice, I'm not sure, but I suspect the latter.
True that aesthetics are arbitrary nonsense which change over time so there's nothing wrong with being fat in that regard. Nothing wrong with having a spare tire if you can still do your own yard work or take a long hike. Not sure what "times get bad" scenario you're imagining, but if it's a "mass civil unrest" or "zombie apocalypse" type of bad, you might have to evacuate an area on foot, evade people trying to rob, rape or kill you or perform some hard physical labor. If things get bad enough so that there are prolonged food shortages, people who need a motorized vehicle to go through Wal Mart will not fare well.
"...a degree of anonymity can cause people to lose control of their inhibitions about what they say..."
I presume you're talking about insults, profanity and personal attacks. i.e. Things you would never say to a person's face. Discussions which devolve to that level are indeed useless. Still, the fact that people would feel the slightest bit "inhibited" from expressing themselves is why it's essential that we preserve anonymity on the internet. When people can be persecuted (in ways other than angry retorts) for what they say, it's good that we have forums where they can express themselves without fear of consequences.
I really like the slashdot moderation system. I would like to see other sites adopt moderation systems more elaborate than "thumbs up / thumbs down".
Is there any currency in the world that has actual value beyond what the users believe? People believe that pieces of paper with writing on them have value, but the minute people lose faith, it becomes toilet paper. Your bank account is nothing but data stored on a hard drive, but you believe it represents purchasing power and you conduct transactions by shuffling bits around with other people who share your belief.
Fiat currencies have been around for centuries and have regularly experienced failures. Considering the fact that bitcoin has been around for less than a decade, it's a little unfair to condemn it for a "schism". Despite the technical issues, the currency still hasn't failed like the fiats which have died in bouts of hyperinflation.
I think your just arguing that your belief system is more widely accepted than the bitcoin belief system.
No, he's saying that "I was only following orders" is in no way a justification for behavior that is morally wrong or even illegal. The parallel is clear. This NSA guy is actually admitting that he is willing to do his job as a cog in the machine even if he thinks the activities are wrong.
The activities were NOT "authorized by Congress". Bush described a "warrantless wiretapping" program (a clear violation of the FISA Act) back in the early 2000s. Then, the government granted itself ex-post-facto immunity with the FISA revisions act in 2007.. There is no "oversight" when the president and DOJ are overseeing themselves. That's like letting police write their own search warrants and claiming it's OK because the police chief and mayor are cool with it. Reviewed by the courts my ass! The FISA court is a secret court where The People have no voice and it rubber stamps anything the government wants to do as long as they claim it's for national security. At least twice the ACLU has gone through the regular courts and sued the government on the issue of illegal and un-Constitutional surveillance. The government has argued that the plaintiffs do not have "legal standing" because they can't prove they were affected (of course the government won't tell you who was affected because "national security"). AFAIK, neither federal courts nor the SCOTUS have ever directly addressed the Constitutionality of the bulk surveillance programs
" write to your congressmen to change things."
LOL. I've written, e-mailed, called and sent snail mail for years and nothing ever changes. The only issues where the little people have so far been victorious is in stopping gun control and with a few tactical victories like defeating CISPA. The government has unlimited time and money however, so they can wear us down with a relentless assault on civil liberties.
I wish we had similar data about all NSA employees, or even all federal government employees. The information isn't associated with a name. It should therefore be OK for people to have it, right?
We only have the operators' word and choppy video as evidence of the 22 second claim, but for the sake of argument, assume it's true. Watch a clock for 22 seconds and imagine a drone hovering over your back yard while your daughter is outside in a bikini. What would you be thinking? "Terrorist" would certainly not occur to me, but I'd immediately think some creep was filming my daughter. Are you saying that's "tinfoil hat" reasoning? Bullshit! Most rational people would have the same thought and I suspect that's exactly what was happening. "Dude! There's a girl with a bikini, check it out!" I don't know what you call "high in the air" but it couldn't have been very high if it was destroyed with #8 birdshot fired vertically.
"How about improving intelligent life here at home instead? "
You mean building better humans?
The politically correct orthodoxy would have you burned at the stake if you announced a $100M initiative to create stronger, more intelligent and more disease-resistance strains of homo sapiens.
"...we have no reason to suspect we know what to look for."
The progression of our own technology gives us a very good reason to believe we know what to look for. At least *some* of what to look for. Namely radio frequency transmissions. It's logical to assume that any advanced civilization would have discovered and experimented with radio waves before developing a more sophisticated communication technology. Yes, we might be unable to detect "sub space" communications from Star Fleet, but I expect we'd be detecting one of their radio transmissions before a FTL starship enters earth orbit.
" Do we want to have our locations monitored 24/7 to calculate if we violated [speed limits]?"
Every single person who who uses the "If you're not doing anything wrong then you have nothing to hide" argument should volunteer for that. If they're doing nothing wrong, then they should have no problem with government installing a tracking device on their vehicle which auto-generates a speeding ticket every single time they exceed the limit.
Technically feasible, politically impossible. We can't even get the paranoid reactionaries on this planet to support the idea of using our knowledge to cure genetic diseases. I'm sure you've heard all the arguments. Any proposal that suggests use of science and technology to select or de-select specific genetic traits generates screams of protest. You get all the "master race" bullshit and hear about how rich people will give their kids genetic advantages and blah, blah, blah. I'd like nothing better than to see the human race start engineering healthier, stronger and more intelligent homo sapiens. However, the ghost of Adolf Hitler will be haunting us for generations.
"...people have come to think that you need these degrees in order to do the jobs, which is not really true. "
Unfortunately, many of the people who think that seem to be in HR departments and IT management positions. Without the right keywords, your resume will be scanned and discarded before a human ever sees it. Some places even want a Master's degree of PhD, when I suspect that the jobs don't really require one. Maybe Si valley is different than the East Coast, but the job market here is tough. I can't imagine getting an interview without that piece of paper, even though it might be irrelevant to the actual job.
Some of the "stuff" is just too damned useful. If you belong to any club, organization, political group or whatever, FB has become a very handy planning and organizing tool. Nobody really wants to manage lists of e-mail addresses anymore, let alone a telephone calling tree like we did in the past. Having a portable device that gives you at least internet access, a telephone, calendar, GPS and camera is also extremely useful.
I think that being cognizant of exactly what you're trading off in terms of privacy vs. functionality is the important thing. I'm not quite ready to retire to the country and become a subsistence farmer.
You think he should get LIFE in prison for complicity in encrypting some data and demanding a fraction of the payment extorted for the encryption keys? Seriously? There are rapists and murderers who get off with lighter sentences than that. There are Wall St. executives who have done far more (like 10E8 times more) financial harm and have never even been investigated, let alone prosecuted.
Ridiculously disproportionate sentences are a contributing factor in the insanely large USA prison population. He shouldn't spend a single day in jail. If that's going to be the punishment, I hope he's never caught.
I'm happy to compete against other U.S. citizens. I'm not happy to have the federal government (which I'm reluctantly funding) steadily importing new competitors for the express purpose of changing the supply/demand dynamic to benefit the potential buyers of my services.
The malware authors need to create some sort of automated bartering program so that they can extract people's maximum willingness to pay. I'd definitely pay $22.88, but no way on $500.
Nonsense. Maybe Republicans have been more successful in gerrymandering, but both parties have engaged in this practice. That's why there are so many "reliable" Republican and Democrat seats. In certain places, you know for certain that the 'R' or 'D' candidate is going to win. Incumbents from both parties typically have a 90+% re-election rate.
If Democrats are so much more popular, why aren't they able to maintain majorities and governorships in state governments and re-district to their own advantage? Are they too principled to use this tactic?
That's why the TEA Party was such an excellent movement. They managed to oust incumbents who had little chance of losing a general election. Impressive achievement for a bunch of old white people. How many incumbent Democrats have progressives and socialists managed to defeat in the last 10 years? And it's not like there aren't plenty of 'D's whose only appeal to the left is that they are marginally better than Republicans.
Note that with a few rare exception, I hate both of these scumbag parties and have rarely voted for either.
I don't see how they could possibly convict him for publishing or selling information that simply described how to defeat a polygraph. That's a definite First Amendment issue.
He screwed himself by running his mouth about how he had "F****d the government" and by coaching someone to pass the polygraph test, knowing(believing) that their intent in doing so was to get a government job.
Now, how do you propose to raise the tens of trillions of dollars necessary to build this massive solar-hydrogen power generation and distribution infrastructure you're talking about?
Let me guess. Massive taxation and huge government subsidies for projects that are obviously not economically feasible at present? Maybe outright nationalization of the energy and transportation industries (because that always works so well)? Government imposed food and energy rationing? Limits on vehicles? Limits on home size and living space?
I don't give a shit about the evidence. I'd rather be burned alive than live under Warmunism.
The point is that the "climate change" fear mongers are using labels to disparage their critics rather than resting on the weight of whatever "logical arguments" and evidence that they apparently have.
Same BS we saw with the terrorist fear mongers. If you didn't believe in the Patriot Act and war, you were unpatriotic and hated the USA and were letting the terrorists win and blah, blah, blah.
If the warmunists have such overwhelming evidence in their favor, why do they need to stifle dissent with a label that has such obvious baggage?
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, but homo sapiens did not evolve in an environment with mass availability of processed foods. To a certain degree, we evolved to be opportunistic eaters. Agriculture, chemistry and other technology have changed the environment so rapidly that evolution cannot possibly keep up.
I used to believe the idea of eat less/exercise more but that's only part of the picture. Counting calories to lose weight is a fool's errand. Exceed your energy needs by 100 calories a day and you pack on 10 pounds a year.
I now believe the key is to eat less crap (especially simple carbs) and more natural foods so that your body more naturally regulates appetite.
One thing's for certain. The whole "eat more carbs and less fats" message was total BS. Whether it was spread through ignorance or malice, I'm not sure, but I suspect the latter.
True that aesthetics are arbitrary nonsense which change over time so there's nothing wrong with being fat in that regard. Nothing wrong with having a spare tire if you can still do your own yard work or take a long hike.
Not sure what "times get bad" scenario you're imagining, but if it's a "mass civil unrest" or "zombie apocalypse" type of bad, you might have to evacuate an area on foot, evade people trying to rob, rape or kill you or perform some hard physical labor. If things get bad enough so that there are prolonged food shortages, people who need a motorized vehicle to go through Wal Mart will not fare well.
"...a degree of anonymity can cause people to lose control of their inhibitions about what they say..."
I presume you're talking about insults, profanity and personal attacks. i.e. Things you would never say to a person's face. Discussions which devolve to that level are indeed useless. Still, the fact that people would feel the slightest bit "inhibited" from expressing themselves is why it's essential that we preserve anonymity on the internet. When people can be persecuted (in ways other than angry retorts) for what they say, it's good that we have forums where they can express themselves without fear of consequences.
I really like the slashdot moderation system. I would like to see other sites adopt moderation systems more elaborate than "thumbs up / thumbs down".
"these folks believe bitcoins have value"
Is there any currency in the world that has actual value beyond what the users believe? People believe that pieces of paper with writing on them have value, but the minute people lose faith, it becomes toilet paper. Your bank account is nothing but data stored on a hard drive, but you believe it represents purchasing power and you conduct transactions by shuffling bits around with other people who share your belief.
Fiat currencies have been around for centuries and have regularly experienced failures. Considering the fact that bitcoin has been around for less than a decade, it's a little unfair to condemn it for a "schism". Despite the technical issues, the currency still hasn't failed like the fiats which have died in bouts of hyperinflation.
I think your just arguing that your belief system is more widely accepted than the bitcoin belief system.
No, he's saying that "I was only following orders" is in no way a justification for behavior that is morally wrong or even illegal. The parallel is clear.
This NSA guy is actually admitting that he is willing to do his job as a cog in the machine even if he thinks the activities are wrong.
The activities were NOT "authorized by Congress". Bush described a "warrantless wiretapping" program (a clear violation of the FISA Act) back in the early 2000s. Then, the government granted itself ex-post-facto immunity with the FISA revisions act in 2007..
There is no "oversight" when the president and DOJ are overseeing themselves. That's like letting police write their own search warrants and claiming it's OK because the police chief and mayor are cool with it.
Reviewed by the courts my ass! The FISA court is a secret court where The People have no voice and it rubber stamps anything the government wants to do as long as they claim it's for national security.
At least twice the ACLU has gone through the regular courts and sued the government on the issue of illegal and un-Constitutional surveillance. The government has argued that the plaintiffs do not have "legal standing" because they can't prove they were affected (of course the government won't tell you who was affected because "national security"). AFAIK, neither federal courts nor the SCOTUS have ever directly addressed the Constitutionality of the bulk surveillance programs
" write to your congressmen to change things."
LOL. I've written, e-mailed, called and sent snail mail for years and nothing ever changes. The only issues where the little people have so far been victorious is in stopping gun control and with a few tactical victories like defeating CISPA.
The government has unlimited time and money however, so they can wear us down with a relentless assault on civil liberties.
I wish we had similar data about all NSA employees, or even all federal government employees.
The information isn't associated with a name. It should therefore be OK for people to have it, right?
We only have the operators' word and choppy video as evidence of the 22 second claim, but for the sake of argument, assume it's true.
Watch a clock for 22 seconds and imagine a drone hovering over your back yard while your daughter is outside in a bikini. What would you be thinking?
"Terrorist" would certainly not occur to me, but I'd immediately think some creep was filming my daughter. Are you saying that's "tinfoil hat" reasoning? Bullshit! Most rational people would have the same thought and I suspect that's exactly what was happening. "Dude! There's a girl with a bikini, check it out!"
I don't know what you call "high in the air" but it couldn't have been very high if it was destroyed with #8 birdshot fired vertically.
So, make a public announcement offering double the number of bitcoins the extortionist is demanding as a reward for the person's capture?
"How about improving intelligent life here at home instead? "
You mean building better humans?
The politically correct orthodoxy would have you burned at the stake if you announced a $100M initiative to create stronger, more intelligent and more disease-resistance strains of homo sapiens.
"...we have no reason to suspect we know what to look for."
The progression of our own technology gives us a very good reason to believe we know what to look for. At least *some* of what to look for. Namely radio frequency transmissions. It's logical to assume that any advanced civilization would have discovered and experimented with radio waves before developing a more sophisticated communication technology.
Yes, we might be unable to detect "sub space" communications from Star Fleet, but I expect we'd be detecting one of their radio transmissions before a FTL starship enters earth orbit.
" Do we want to have our locations monitored 24/7 to calculate if we violated [speed limits]?"
Every single person who who uses the "If you're not doing anything wrong then you have nothing to hide" argument should volunteer for that. If they're doing nothing wrong, then they should have no problem with government installing a tracking device on their vehicle which auto-generates a speeding ticket every single time they exceed the limit.
I find it difficult to believe that teenagers would hack a website because they are morally outraged about the practice of adultery.
Technically feasible, politically impossible. We can't even get the paranoid reactionaries on this planet to support the idea of using our knowledge to cure genetic diseases. I'm sure you've heard all the arguments. Any proposal that suggests use of science and technology to select or de-select specific genetic traits generates screams of protest. You get all the "master race" bullshit and hear about how rich people will give their kids genetic advantages and blah, blah, blah.
I'd like nothing better than to see the human race start engineering healthier, stronger and more intelligent homo sapiens. However, the ghost of Adolf Hitler will be haunting us for generations.
"...people have come to think that you need these degrees in order to do the jobs, which is not really true. "
Unfortunately, many of the people who think that seem to be in HR departments and IT management positions. Without the right keywords, your resume will be scanned and discarded before a human ever sees it. Some places even want a Master's degree of PhD, when I suspect that the jobs don't really require one.
Maybe Si valley is different than the East Coast, but the job market here is tough. I can't imagine getting an interview without that piece of paper, even though it might be irrelevant to the actual job.
"all you have to do is not use the stuff."
Some of the "stuff" is just too damned useful. If you belong to any club, organization, political group or whatever, FB has become a very handy planning and organizing tool. Nobody really wants to manage lists of e-mail addresses anymore, let alone a telephone calling tree like we did in the past.
Having a portable device that gives you at least internet access, a telephone, calendar, GPS and camera is also extremely useful.
I think that being cognizant of exactly what you're trading off in terms of privacy vs. functionality is the important thing. I'm not quite ready to retire to the country and become a subsistence farmer.
You think he should get LIFE in prison for complicity in encrypting some data and demanding a fraction of the payment extorted for the encryption keys? Seriously? There are rapists and murderers who get off with lighter sentences than that. There are Wall St. executives who have done far more (like 10E8 times more) financial harm and have never even been investigated, let alone prosecuted.
Ridiculously disproportionate sentences are a contributing factor in the insanely large USA prison population. He shouldn't spend a single day in jail. If that's going to be the punishment, I hope he's never caught.
I'm happy to compete against other U.S. citizens. I'm not happy to have the federal government (which I'm reluctantly funding) steadily importing new competitors for the express purpose of changing the supply/demand dynamic to benefit the potential buyers of my services.
The malware authors need to create some sort of automated bartering program so that they can extract people's maximum willingness to pay. I'd definitely pay $22.88, but no way on $500.
Nonsense. Maybe Republicans have been more successful in gerrymandering, but both parties have engaged in this practice. That's why there are so many "reliable" Republican and Democrat seats.
In certain places, you know for certain that the 'R' or 'D' candidate is going to win. Incumbents from both parties typically have a 90+% re-election rate.
If Democrats are so much more popular, why aren't they able to maintain majorities and governorships in state governments and re-district to their own advantage? Are they too principled to use this tactic?
That's why the TEA Party was such an excellent movement. They managed to oust incumbents who had little chance of losing a general election. Impressive achievement for a bunch of old white people. How many incumbent Democrats have progressives and socialists managed to defeat in the last 10 years? And it's not like there aren't plenty of 'D's whose only appeal to the left is that they are marginally better than Republicans.
Note that with a few rare exception, I hate both of these scumbag parties and have rarely voted for either.
I don't see how they could possibly convict him for publishing or selling information that simply described how to defeat a polygraph. That's a definite First Amendment issue.
He screwed himself by running his mouth about how he had "F****d the government" and by coaching someone to pass the polygraph test, knowing(believing) that their intent in doing so was to get a government job.
IIRC, they got Al Capone for tax evasion.
The best way way to make "crime" go away is to repeal stupid laws. No victim, no crime.
With moderate use, those things last forever.
Now, how do you propose to raise the tens of trillions of dollars necessary to build this massive solar-hydrogen power generation and distribution infrastructure you're talking about?
Let me guess. Massive taxation and huge government subsidies for projects that are obviously not economically feasible at present? Maybe outright nationalization of the energy and transportation industries (because that always works so well)? Government imposed food and energy rationing? Limits on vehicles? Limits on home size and living space?
I don't give a shit about the evidence. I'd rather be burned alive than live under Warmunism.
The point is that the "climate change" fear mongers are using labels to disparage their critics rather than resting on the weight of whatever "logical arguments" and evidence that they apparently have.
Same BS we saw with the terrorist fear mongers. If you didn't believe in the Patriot Act and war, you were unpatriotic and hated the USA and were letting the terrorists win and blah, blah, blah.
If the warmunists have such overwhelming evidence in their favor, why do they need to stifle dissent with a label that has such obvious baggage?