Morally they were required to choose between acting out of fear for the bully or respect for their customer. I come from a socialist country, so perhaps it's not so strange that I argue they should have sided with the customers. I find it morally reprehensible that they choose not only to do what they are legally required to do - remove streams AFTER legitimate complaints - but to preempt the situation by means that have the risk of cutting off legitimate streams such as this. Going above and beyond was the choice of ustream, to as you put it, cover their ass.
On one hand covering your own ass isn't necessarily morally wrong... to bully the end user on behalf of the *AA is not necessarily morally wrong, because they have little choice about it. But they do have a choice in how far they go... and then it becomes wrong, when they go further than they have to.
I'd like to point out that ustream agrees with this point, to the degree that in their CYA-apology they point out they've stopped using the third party service that caused this until such a time that they can re-calibrate it to make sure this doesn't happen again.
In this particular case I agree, but like I said I was arguing the morality of the action, not the specific case. It's still possible they have grounds for legal action, that depends on the terms of service associated with the free service. (A contract is a contract even if the price of the product is zero.) But I doubt it, and I leave that judgement entirely up to their legal team, it's beyond my expertise.
The moral side on the other hand, isn't, so I can indeed argue that if they do have grounds to sue according to said legal team, then they would be within their moral rights to do so.
If you wish to further debate the existence or not of a legal case, go find a lawyer.
Well, let's see... Bully A, let's call him Steve, goes and tells innocent bystander B, let's call him Doofus, to go give the victim, let's call him icebraining, a wedgie. Doofus is so scared of Steve, that he not only wedgies icebraining, but gives him an atomic wedgie and locks him in his locker, and to top it off, fills it with shaving foam.
Steve is a horrible bully, no denying... but Doofus is still bullying icebraining, doing wrong, ethically, morally, totally.
So, while I agree that there isn't likely to be a case here since they were using a free account, my point still holds - it isn't morally wrong to hit back with the same tactics. Ideally against Steve, but you can't reach Steve... so hitting Doofus back hard enough that he stops thinking it's a good idea to go above and beyond in his running errands for Steve, well, that'll still have a positive effect overall.
If people want my DATA enough to go after me with a wrench, I'll give up my password before they even lift it. Well, either that or I've gotten involved with something really fucking weird. Anyway, that's not the standard use-case here... People want my laptop. It's expensive. Odds of getting my laptop stolen are a lot higher than anyone taking half an interest in what's on it.
But when they've stolen it, I'd rather they were forced to do a re-install to use it, rather than give them for free, without an effort, the bonus of banking details and personal information as well as private correspondence, which they are likely to stumble on while looking for my porn stash. (Not that I bother hiding it.)
These people won't be coming after me with a wrench to find out what's on the encrypted drive... they'll re-format and move on. Anything they would have found would have been a bonus, but it was the hardware that lured them into it from the start and that's what they'll focus on. Meanwhile if I'm encrypted I get a new machine on the insurance, restore from backup, and is safe and sound. If my data was unencrypted... well, then I'd have to go through the process of changing every password, securing my finances as best I can, protect myself against fraud and identity theft, and explain the loss of private pictures to the people on them, and so on.
I don't think you are quite assessing the right risks here. It's not about being safe in the extreme case of people wanting your data, it's about your data being safe in the much more likely case of someone getting access to your hardware.
Actually the Hugo awards was using ustream's unpaid open service, and have absolutely no business relationship whatsoever with ustream. Ustream has the full right to cut the free service any time they want, it's their service. Much like how I could offer you the use of my lawn to proclaim your opinions on, and then tell you to get out of there for whatever reason I wanted, whenever I wanted, without ever infringing on your rights to free speech or whatever.
So it's not a case of "oops my bad", it's a case of "You got what you paid for."
Paid customers of ustream are whitelisted, and not checked for copyright infringement. Ergo, the fault is entirely in the hands of the Hugo Awards, who chose the service and to use the free rather than paid model.
That doesn't mean I agree with copyright infringement detecting AI and that whole wasp-hive, but that has nothing to do with this particular incident.
We also by the same standards have too many women, too many websites, too much food, too much air, too much clothes, too much... everything. You're not expected to consume ALL the entertainment that is produced, and in fact most of the entertainment that is produced isn't even expected to be to your liking - it's aimed at OTHER people, other demographics.
One thing I'll agree we have way too much off, is idiots. But we're human, it comes with the territory. We're all a little bit of an idiot... at times. Some just make more a full time commitment to it. Some fill entire lives with it.
Well yes, but sometimes the bullies are too dumb to realize they shouldn't hit people until someone actually hits back. It's really that simple, and saying it isn't going to help anyone is making a rather gross assumption based on moral values that aren't shared by the people on the other side of the argument. There's nothing amoral about self-defence, and in most of the world you are legally and socially allowed to fight back with an equal amount of force that you're being fought with: if they come at you with a knife, you can fight back with a knife. If they come at you with their hands, you fight back with your hands.
So I say they should definitely consider suing if their legal team says they have grounds. Smacking the nose of the opposition and making them have to think twice about how heavyhanded they are in protecting their copyrights would be beneficial to everyone... and yes, they would indeed think twice: we all know how much they love money and how much they'd hate to leave themselves open for massive losses.
No, Occam's razor says that from available theories you should choose the one that makes the least assumptions. Assuming that NASA made the same mistake twice is not impossible, but it's still an assumption, and given that they are much more careful to double check that facet these days, it's not a likely one. It's much more likely to be either material degradation, which is a basic fact of life and not so predictable under the conditions of space, or operator error, which is also a fact of life. Sometimes a bolt goes in at just a hair of the wrong angle, bites the threads, and for every turn you make you compound the damage. Since these things are things that conform very much to the actual article, they are the lesser assumptions.
Or to put it differently: I don't think that term means quite what you think it does.
It might not be rocket science to identify and rectify the problem... on earth. Under gravity. You know, where shavings fall downwards, where we have access to as many tools as our credit cards can afford us and as many improvised tools as our toolchest/home/neighbourhood can offer...
But it's pretty damn close to rocket science how to identify and deal with the same problem while wearing an unwieldy space-suit in a weightless environment, with the extremely limited set of equipment and resources they have available. The also don't have the luxury of just trying over and over again until it works, because their time outside the station is limited, as well as their resources to keep going out.
I mean, you're welcome to jump in your vdub and drive up there to help out, I'm sure they'd appreciate it.
Over-reliance works in favour of the criminals.
on
The Case Against DNA
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· Score: 2
There was a guy here in Sweden who is in jail for rape. He recently got convicted for the further crime of smuggling sperm out with his son who was then supposed to rape a woman, leave the sperm sample there, and thus throw some doubt into the validity of the conviction of his father.
(In a finger cut off a latex glove, if I recall correctly, since I know you're all very curious.)
The problem with cases like this is that they make things like that possible. If DNA is all you need, then it doesn't really take much... a few shakes, scratch your head... hell, they grab DNA off the saliva on cigarette butts. With the advances in the technology, soon enough you'll cough on the bus and a week later get arrested for the crimes committed by some guy who sat down in the same seat 20 minutes later.
There's really only one thing we need to solve this, and amusingly it is also needed to solve another major issue with the legal system... We need a legal system, and specifically judges, that are familiar with both technology and science. Well familiar. I mean, you could even argue that the judge should BE a scientist... setting up a null hypothesis before the trial, and doing careful testing to either validate or disprove the hypothesis.
Maybe that would cut down on the amount of "patent suits" judged on by people who have no idea what a mouse pointer is.
Actually that's not the cell company tracking your phone, that's your phone "reporting in" to the towers. What the guy above you is talking about is whether or not the cell company keeps this information for even a second after your phone has reported in from a NEW tower. Most phone companies keep records just because they can pretty much... But in some places where that is legal some companies are still conscious enough of the privacy of their users that they don't actually track the PAST positions of their users, rather just storing the last seen cell towers.
Actually anyone who is legally allowed to vote is "letting insane people run our country", or rather YOUR country.
I'm also highly amused by your statement that you can't "apply rigorous and rigid method to something as flexible as human emotional and mental states," since that is almost exactly what I said a few replies up the thread when I reminded you that the fact that YOU don't see a knife as more scary than a gun doesn't mean that everyone is like you. So thank you for admitting that you agree with me on the original point.
And I must say it doesn't surprise me in the least bit that you've encountered the mental health industry.
To put that behind us though, it doesn't really matter whether psychology itself is a science or not, you can still do scientific research into it. If I wanted to prove that astrology is bullcrap that's easily done, but I'd have to do scientific research into astrology to do so. Whether or not astrology is scientific doesn't matter in that context.
In other words, whether or not psychology is a science or not, psychological research can be done by sound scientific rules. I know you won't agree with me, because you don't really seem like the type of person that actually cares about reason and logic, so yeah, we'll just have to agree to disagree. It was a pleasure arguing with you, good luck with your "horticulture".
Oh man satiated... I had a salad phase this summer, it was too hot for regular food. Normally I might have like a pack of ramen for lunch, it's like 500 calories. During my salad phase I replaced that with a big salad. A big, big salad. I don't know how big my salad bowl is, but it's one of those things you'd see in like restaurants or something. It would take me a good hour just to eat it all, and at the end I'd literally be tired in my face due to all the chewing.
But it wasn't enough calories. I mean, I'm pretty strict, when you go down as fast as I do you have to be - going down TOO fast is just as bad as not going down... so I had to eat more. So I ended up slathering this salad in like half a bottle of garlic dressing, fat, fat dressing. That doubled the amount of calories in the bowl easily, tripled it maybe... which ended up to be just about right for lunch, about 500 calories, give or take.
So yeah, if you wanna be really full, go for the healthy food... but honestly your body gets used to whatever you decide to follow. When I was younger I ate once a day, then I ate twice a day, now I eat thrice a day, and in a few months when it's time for me to stop losing weight I'll probably add another meal just to do that. You might be strangely hungry at times at first, or not be hungry when it's time to eat, but if you eat on schedule for a few days, weeks, then soon your body knows the drill and it will be ready for food at the time and place and amount you are supposed to eat.
Don't underestimate the self-adjustments of the human body/systems to your current routines. And don't let hunger or other such signals drive your eating if your weight is out of control - then you've already proven that your hunger is unreliable. Some of us just don't have that normal signal, and we have to take control of it to keep things in check.
Actually my cholesterol is fine, but I'm fully aware that I might not be eating the healthiest of foods; even though there is absolutely no firm research or consensus between studies on what exactly constitutes healthy food.
There is however plenty of studies showing that obesity is just plain bad for you. So what you are bringing up is just another of the many excuses that fatasses like I used to be use to convince themselves it's not worth it, I know, I used it myself! Now here's a counter-argument...
Let's play russian roulette. If you're fat, you play with three bullets, if you're normal weight and eat bad food, you play with one, and if you forgo all the pleasures of living... you still play with one, because a meteorite might hit you and kill you outright. Sure, technically you should be playing with a fraction of one, but a chance of one in a million or two in a million is still an unlikely event...
The people that immediately bring out "But how's your cholesterol" or "What about your salt intake" or any of the number of variations, they are basically arguing that it was a wasted effort to remove two bullets from the gun because there's still one left in there.
Increasing your odds of survival and health is never a bad idea, even if you don't go all the way. Every little bit counts... and losing weight isn't a little bit by any means - it's the biggest bit and the bit that's scientifically recognized to be indeed unhealthy.
Well, I can't say I find it very cool. But then I suppose it could be, if you put curtains, pets, other humans, soft furniture like pillows in a room... and then hid heavy objects in/behind a few of these. Yeah, that would amuse me.
Especially with one of these robot babies, given the increased mobility of some sort of motorized transport, and the decreased mental function of some sort of retardation. Watching one of those little tykes on wheels bang repeatedly head first into a metal anvil hidden inside a pillow because it just can't figure out why this pillow is different from the other pillows...
Man, I wouldn't even bother coming to slashdot to laugh at the people who actually read the article any more, I'd be so entertained.
And that.... is why I am not allowed around children.
I'm stuffed! No really, I'm so full I feel like rolling off this chair. I just had half a pizza and half a bottle of coke, and I'm not entirely sure I won't finish at least one of those two when this settles down!
And with that said, I've lost about 160lbs over the last year and a half. I eat pizza, noddles, burgers, I have ice cream, candy... I eat chips, dip, sauces... Oh man, do I ever... So how did I lose that weight?
I stopped eating so god damn much.
That's it. No exercise, no mysticism, no fad diets. I don't pay particular attention to what food is healthy and what isn't, I just look at how many calories it is, and I eat less of it than I expend in a day. This pizza feast? Oh man, at a guesstimate I binged a good 2000 calories tonight, that's more than I usually eat in an entire day! And that's okay, because I don't do this every day. Tomorrow I won't even feel like eating much for the first half of the day, I'll probably end up eating a pear or two for breakfast just to wake up the system, and then lunch will be something light again. All in all it's not the day that counts, but the average over time.
So yeah, from one former fatass to all the fatasses out there... keep fooling yourself if you want, keep telling yourself that you don't want to lose weight because you'll have to stop eating tasty shit... it's not true, not even remotely. You are using it as an excuse and you know it. It just means you'll have to stop eating twice as much as you need. And no, you won't be constantly hungry if you eat less, people aren't built to eat the amounts you do, it's just your body that has gotten used to it. Once you've stopped that in it's tracks, the body quickly adjusts, and you'll once more only be hungry before meals and so on.
There's no magic. You can keep eating whatever the fuck you want. Just a lot less of it. If you want to eat a LOT, then sure, salad is the way to go... but if you want to eat deliciously greasy... some moderation is key. And it's not harder than that. It's not even much of an effort. No need to go on a diet, no need to even decide to lose weight... just decide to eat less. That's it. Eat less. Weight will fall off, at an unbelievable rate, and you'll still be eating your pizza and chugging that coke... just not for every meal any more.
"Psychology is an academic and applied discipline that involves the scientific study of mental functions and behaviors," says wikipedia, and backs it up with citations from various sources including the APA, which if you didn't know it is... "the largest scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the United States. APA is the world's largest association of psychologists, with more than 137,000 researchers, educators, clinicians, consultants and students as its members."
If you want to troll people, you should really try harder. Or if you're actually trying to argue a point perhaps you'd do better if you found some facts to back you up first.
Let me reiterate. Research shows that this is how people actually react. In real life the majority of victims are more afraid of a knife than a gun, in close distance one on one violations. I don't claim this is logical, or smart, but it's how people react regardless. It's not something I'm furthering, advocating, or anything of the kind... it's just basic psychological research, which clearly refutes your statment that "BOOM is more impressive and intimidating than SNICK" when you are close enough to press it against someone's head. It just isn't, to most people.
If you're not sober enough to realize that the world is bigger than your own context, and that people have emotional reactions with no basis in your logic or reasoning about the deadlyness of a weapon, then that is truly not my problem, and I won't bother to argue it any more.
A general suggestion would be to first stop thinking about "the fed" in the context of this, since whatever country's version of "the fed" you think of, you fall short of reality in one very important way: The internet isn't a country. Bitcoin is not a countrybound currency, and such no one country or banking system can or should back it in it's entirety. Now that being said I agree that a fiat currency on top of a fiat currency is a risky thing in a manner of speaking, but only in the respect of the issuing company going bankrupt. Say for instance the second life currency, L$, would be worthless if Second Life was to vanish. However bitcoin isn't backed by an entity, it's a distributed currency, and as such it's in theory pretty resistant to such things. That's half the point of it.
Yes, in reality this is just a store branded debitcard, by whatever card company it ends up being connected to... But that's not a bad thing. The big thing about this particular card is that it's the theoretical solution to exactly the problem you address in the rest of your message: limited userbase and usability of the currency. By having a debit card that you can fill up with bitcoins and use to pay real money with anywhere a "mastercard" or whatever is accepted, you suddenly increase the usability of the currency immensely. No need to go through a processor on the internet, getting your funds transferred to your bank or whatever... just whip out your card and pay.
One of the main reasons bitcoins don't really take off is that there is very little you can do for them, besides novelty items, hosting, vpn and such techno services, and of course the large black market segment. This card would essentially increase the potential use for the currency to EVERYTHING.
Actually that's not true. While the collected funds pay for public service radio as well, it's only the TV-receivers that have to pay.
But no, I don't have a radio - streaming audio entertainment over the network or downloading just the songs I wanted was feasible long before the same was true for video.
I don't think the ability to fiddle with the exchange rates is really something unique to this situation: a common way to get shafted when you travel abroad is that companies allow you to pay in your "home currency" on your credit card, thereby saving you the currency exchange surcharge from your card provider... and instead putting you on the hook for a price calculated with an incorrect exchange rate, giving the vendor or atm a direct profit.
Also I wouldn't speculate too much about how this would look because it isn't here yet, but there are bitcoin exchanges where you exchange your money for bitcoin or vice versa - if the card had bad exchange rates that would be an avenue to simply sidestep or even profit from that.
Slashdot Mirror
Morally they were required to choose between acting out of fear for the bully or respect for their customer. I come from a socialist country, so perhaps it's not so strange that I argue they should have sided with the customers. I find it morally reprehensible that they choose not only to do what they are legally required to do - remove streams AFTER legitimate complaints - but to preempt the situation by means that have the risk of cutting off legitimate streams such as this. Going above and beyond was the choice of ustream, to as you put it, cover their ass.
On one hand covering your own ass isn't necessarily morally wrong... to bully the end user on behalf of the *AA is not necessarily morally wrong, because they have little choice about it. But they do have a choice in how far they go... and then it becomes wrong, when they go further than they have to.
I'd like to point out that ustream agrees with this point, to the degree that in their CYA-apology they point out they've stopped using the third party service that caused this until such a time that they can re-calibrate it to make sure this doesn't happen again.
In this particular case I agree, but like I said I was arguing the morality of the action, not the specific case. It's still possible they have grounds for legal action, that depends on the terms of service associated with the free service. (A contract is a contract even if the price of the product is zero.) But I doubt it, and I leave that judgement entirely up to their legal team, it's beyond my expertise.
The moral side on the other hand, isn't, so I can indeed argue that if they do have grounds to sue according to said legal team, then they would be within their moral rights to do so.
If you wish to further debate the existence or not of a legal case, go find a lawyer.
Well, let's see... Bully A, let's call him Steve, goes and tells innocent bystander B, let's call him Doofus, to go give the victim, let's call him icebraining, a wedgie. Doofus is so scared of Steve, that he not only wedgies icebraining, but gives him an atomic wedgie and locks him in his locker, and to top it off, fills it with shaving foam.
Steve is a horrible bully, no denying... but Doofus is still bullying icebraining, doing wrong, ethically, morally, totally.
So, while I agree that there isn't likely to be a case here since they were using a free account, my point still holds - it isn't morally wrong to hit back with the same tactics. Ideally against Steve, but you can't reach Steve... so hitting Doofus back hard enough that he stops thinking it's a good idea to go above and beyond in his running errands for Steve, well, that'll still have a positive effect overall.
Yes, but with a strong password they can keep doing that for the rest of your natural life and still not get in. So it's a non-issue.
If people want my DATA enough to go after me with a wrench, I'll give up my password before they even lift it. Well, either that or I've gotten involved with something really fucking weird. Anyway, that's not the standard use-case here... People want my laptop. It's expensive. Odds of getting my laptop stolen are a lot higher than anyone taking half an interest in what's on it.
But when they've stolen it, I'd rather they were forced to do a re-install to use it, rather than give them for free, without an effort, the bonus of banking details and personal information as well as private correspondence, which they are likely to stumble on while looking for my porn stash. (Not that I bother hiding it.)
These people won't be coming after me with a wrench to find out what's on the encrypted drive... they'll re-format and move on. Anything they would have found would have been a bonus, but it was the hardware that lured them into it from the start and that's what they'll focus on. Meanwhile if I'm encrypted I get a new machine on the insurance, restore from backup, and is safe and sound. If my data was unencrypted... well, then I'd have to go through the process of changing every password, securing my finances as best I can, protect myself against fraud and identity theft, and explain the loss of private pictures to the people on them, and so on.
I don't think you are quite assessing the right risks here. It's not about being safe in the extreme case of people wanting your data, it's about your data being safe in the much more likely case of someone getting access to your hardware.
Actually the Hugo awards was using ustream's unpaid open service, and have absolutely no business relationship whatsoever with ustream. Ustream has the full right to cut the free service any time they want, it's their service. Much like how I could offer you the use of my lawn to proclaim your opinions on, and then tell you to get out of there for whatever reason I wanted, whenever I wanted, without ever infringing on your rights to free speech or whatever.
So it's not a case of "oops my bad", it's a case of "You got what you paid for."
Paid customers of ustream are whitelisted, and not checked for copyright infringement. Ergo, the fault is entirely in the hands of the Hugo Awards, who chose the service and to use the free rather than paid model.
That doesn't mean I agree with copyright infringement detecting AI and that whole wasp-hive, but that has nothing to do with this particular incident.
We also by the same standards have too many women, too many websites, too much food, too much air, too much clothes, too much... everything. You're not expected to consume ALL the entertainment that is produced, and in fact most of the entertainment that is produced isn't even expected to be to your liking - it's aimed at OTHER people, other demographics.
One thing I'll agree we have way too much off, is idiots. But we're human, it comes with the territory. We're all a little bit of an idiot... at times. Some just make more a full time commitment to it. Some fill entire lives with it.
Well yes, but sometimes the bullies are too dumb to realize they shouldn't hit people until someone actually hits back. It's really that simple, and saying it isn't going to help anyone is making a rather gross assumption based on moral values that aren't shared by the people on the other side of the argument. There's nothing amoral about self-defence, and in most of the world you are legally and socially allowed to fight back with an equal amount of force that you're being fought with: if they come at you with a knife, you can fight back with a knife. If they come at you with their hands, you fight back with your hands.
So I say they should definitely consider suing if their legal team says they have grounds. Smacking the nose of the opposition and making them have to think twice about how heavyhanded they are in protecting their copyrights would be beneficial to everyone... and yes, they would indeed think twice: we all know how much they love money and how much they'd hate to leave themselves open for massive losses.
No, Occam's razor says that from available theories you should choose the one that makes the least assumptions. Assuming that NASA made the same mistake twice is not impossible, but it's still an assumption, and given that they are much more careful to double check that facet these days, it's not a likely one. It's much more likely to be either material degradation, which is a basic fact of life and not so predictable under the conditions of space, or operator error, which is also a fact of life. Sometimes a bolt goes in at just a hair of the wrong angle, bites the threads, and for every turn you make you compound the damage. Since these things are things that conform very much to the actual article, they are the lesser assumptions.
Or to put it differently: I don't think that term means quite what you think it does.
Is that for when you used the WD40 to make your wife go away, or for when you used the duct tape to make her stop talking?
It might not be rocket science to identify and rectify the problem... on earth. Under gravity. You know, where shavings fall downwards, where we have access to as many tools as our credit cards can afford us and as many improvised tools as our toolchest/home/neighbourhood can offer...
But it's pretty damn close to rocket science how to identify and deal with the same problem while wearing an unwieldy space-suit in a weightless environment, with the extremely limited set of equipment and resources they have available. The also don't have the luxury of just trying over and over again until it works, because their time outside the station is limited, as well as their resources to keep going out.
I mean, you're welcome to jump in your vdub and drive up there to help out, I'm sure they'd appreciate it.
There was a guy here in Sweden who is in jail for rape. He recently got convicted for the further crime of smuggling sperm out with his son who was then supposed to rape a woman, leave the sperm sample there, and thus throw some doubt into the validity of the conviction of his father.
(In a finger cut off a latex glove, if I recall correctly, since I know you're all very curious.)
The problem with cases like this is that they make things like that possible. If DNA is all you need, then it doesn't really take much... a few shakes, scratch your head... hell, they grab DNA off the saliva on cigarette butts. With the advances in the technology, soon enough you'll cough on the bus and a week later get arrested for the crimes committed by some guy who sat down in the same seat 20 minutes later.
There's really only one thing we need to solve this, and amusingly it is also needed to solve another major issue with the legal system... We need a legal system, and specifically judges, that are familiar with both technology and science. Well familiar. I mean, you could even argue that the judge should BE a scientist... setting up a null hypothesis before the trial, and doing careful testing to either validate or disprove the hypothesis.
Maybe that would cut down on the amount of "patent suits" judged on by people who have no idea what a mouse pointer is.
Actually that's not the cell company tracking your phone, that's your phone "reporting in" to the towers. What the guy above you is talking about is whether or not the cell company keeps this information for even a second after your phone has reported in from a NEW tower. Most phone companies keep records just because they can pretty much... But in some places where that is legal some companies are still conscious enough of the privacy of their users that they don't actually track the PAST positions of their users, rather just storing the last seen cell towers.
Actually anyone who is legally allowed to vote is "letting insane people run our country", or rather YOUR country.
I'm also highly amused by your statement that you can't "apply rigorous and rigid method to something as flexible as human emotional and mental states," since that is almost exactly what I said a few replies up the thread when I reminded you that the fact that YOU don't see a knife as more scary than a gun doesn't mean that everyone is like you. So thank you for admitting that you agree with me on the original point.
And I must say it doesn't surprise me in the least bit that you've encountered the mental health industry.
To put that behind us though, it doesn't really matter whether psychology itself is a science or not, you can still do scientific research into it. If I wanted to prove that astrology is bullcrap that's easily done, but I'd have to do scientific research into astrology to do so. Whether or not astrology is scientific doesn't matter in that context.
In other words, whether or not psychology is a science or not, psychological research can be done by sound scientific rules. I know you won't agree with me, because you don't really seem like the type of person that actually cares about reason and logic, so yeah, we'll just have to agree to disagree. It was a pleasure arguing with you, good luck with your "horticulture".
Oh man satiated... I had a salad phase this summer, it was too hot for regular food. Normally I might have like a pack of ramen for lunch, it's like 500 calories. During my salad phase I replaced that with a big salad. A big, big salad. I don't know how big my salad bowl is, but it's one of those things you'd see in like restaurants or something. It would take me a good hour just to eat it all, and at the end I'd literally be tired in my face due to all the chewing.
But it wasn't enough calories. I mean, I'm pretty strict, when you go down as fast as I do you have to be - going down TOO fast is just as bad as not going down... so I had to eat more. So I ended up slathering this salad in like half a bottle of garlic dressing, fat, fat dressing. That doubled the amount of calories in the bowl easily, tripled it maybe... which ended up to be just about right for lunch, about 500 calories, give or take.
So yeah, if you wanna be really full, go for the healthy food... but honestly your body gets used to whatever you decide to follow. When I was younger I ate once a day, then I ate twice a day, now I eat thrice a day, and in a few months when it's time for me to stop losing weight I'll probably add another meal just to do that. You might be strangely hungry at times at first, or not be hungry when it's time to eat, but if you eat on schedule for a few days, weeks, then soon your body knows the drill and it will be ready for food at the time and place and amount you are supposed to eat.
Don't underestimate the self-adjustments of the human body/systems to your current routines. And don't let hunger or other such signals drive your eating if your weight is out of control - then you've already proven that your hunger is unreliable. Some of us just don't have that normal signal, and we have to take control of it to keep things in check.
Actually my cholesterol is fine, but I'm fully aware that I might not be eating the healthiest of foods; even though there is absolutely no firm research or consensus between studies on what exactly constitutes healthy food.
There is however plenty of studies showing that obesity is just plain bad for you. So what you are bringing up is just another of the many excuses that fatasses like I used to be use to convince themselves it's not worth it, I know, I used it myself! Now here's a counter-argument...
Let's play russian roulette. If you're fat, you play with three bullets, if you're normal weight and eat bad food, you play with one, and if you forgo all the pleasures of living... you still play with one, because a meteorite might hit you and kill you outright. Sure, technically you should be playing with a fraction of one, but a chance of one in a million or two in a million is still an unlikely event...
The people that immediately bring out "But how's your cholesterol" or "What about your salt intake" or any of the number of variations, they are basically arguing that it was a wasted effort to remove two bullets from the gun because there's still one left in there.
Increasing your odds of survival and health is never a bad idea, even if you don't go all the way. Every little bit counts... and losing weight isn't a little bit by any means - it's the biggest bit and the bit that's scientifically recognized to be indeed unhealthy.
Well, I can't say I find it very cool. But then I suppose it could be, if you put curtains, pets, other humans, soft furniture like pillows in a room... and then hid heavy objects in/behind a few of these. Yeah, that would amuse me.
Especially with one of these robot babies, given the increased mobility of some sort of motorized transport, and the decreased mental function of some sort of retardation. Watching one of those little tykes on wheels bang repeatedly head first into a metal anvil hidden inside a pillow because it just can't figure out why this pillow is different from the other pillows...
Man, I wouldn't even bother coming to slashdot to laugh at the people who actually read the article any more, I'd be so entertained.
And that.... is why I am not allowed around children.
I'm stuffed! No really, I'm so full I feel like rolling off this chair. I just had half a pizza and half a bottle of coke, and I'm not entirely sure I won't finish at least one of those two when this settles down!
And with that said, I've lost about 160lbs over the last year and a half. I eat pizza, noddles, burgers, I have ice cream, candy... I eat chips, dip, sauces... Oh man, do I ever... So how did I lose that weight?
I stopped eating so god damn much.
That's it. No exercise, no mysticism, no fad diets. I don't pay particular attention to what food is healthy and what isn't, I just look at how many calories it is, and I eat less of it than I expend in a day. This pizza feast? Oh man, at a guesstimate I binged a good 2000 calories tonight, that's more than I usually eat in an entire day! And that's okay, because I don't do this every day. Tomorrow I won't even feel like eating much for the first half of the day, I'll probably end up eating a pear or two for breakfast just to wake up the system, and then lunch will be something light again. All in all it's not the day that counts, but the average over time.
So yeah, from one former fatass to all the fatasses out there... keep fooling yourself if you want, keep telling yourself that you don't want to lose weight because you'll have to stop eating tasty shit... it's not true, not even remotely. You are using it as an excuse and you know it. It just means you'll have to stop eating twice as much as you need. And no, you won't be constantly hungry if you eat less, people aren't built to eat the amounts you do, it's just your body that has gotten used to it. Once you've stopped that in it's tracks, the body quickly adjusts, and you'll once more only be hungry before meals and so on.
There's no magic. You can keep eating whatever the fuck you want. Just a lot less of it. If you want to eat a LOT, then sure, salad is the way to go... but if you want to eat deliciously greasy... some moderation is key. And it's not harder than that. It's not even much of an effort. No need to go on a diet, no need to even decide to lose weight... just decide to eat less. That's it. Eat less. Weight will fall off, at an unbelievable rate, and you'll still be eating your pizza and chugging that coke... just not for every meal any more.
Hmm, well, easy enough to answer. Let's play russian roulette! I'll play with one bullet, and you play with three.
Not that I avoid saturated fats or live a particularly healthy life, I'm just pointing out your argument is full of holes.
"Psychology is an academic and applied discipline that involves the scientific study of mental functions and behaviors," says wikipedia, and backs it up with citations from various sources including the APA, which if you didn't know it is... "the largest scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the United States. APA is the world's largest association of psychologists, with more than 137,000 researchers, educators, clinicians, consultants and students as its members."
If you want to troll people, you should really try harder. Or if you're actually trying to argue a point perhaps you'd do better if you found some facts to back you up first.
That doesn't require trust, that requires suspension of disbelief.
Let me reiterate. Research shows that this is how people actually react. In real life the majority of victims are more afraid of a knife than a gun, in close distance one on one violations. I don't claim this is logical, or smart, but it's how people react regardless. It's not something I'm furthering, advocating, or anything of the kind... it's just basic psychological research, which clearly refutes your statment that "BOOM is more impressive and intimidating than SNICK" when you are close enough to press it against someone's head. It just isn't, to most people.
If you're not sober enough to realize that the world is bigger than your own context, and that people have emotional reactions with no basis in your logic or reasoning about the deadlyness of a weapon, then that is truly not my problem, and I won't bother to argue it any more.
A general suggestion would be to first stop thinking about "the fed" in the context of this, since whatever country's version of "the fed" you think of, you fall short of reality in one very important way: The internet isn't a country. Bitcoin is not a countrybound currency, and such no one country or banking system can or should back it in it's entirety. Now that being said I agree that a fiat currency on top of a fiat currency is a risky thing in a manner of speaking, but only in the respect of the issuing company going bankrupt. Say for instance the second life currency, L$, would be worthless if Second Life was to vanish. However bitcoin isn't backed by an entity, it's a distributed currency, and as such it's in theory pretty resistant to such things. That's half the point of it.
Yes, in reality this is just a store branded debitcard, by whatever card company it ends up being connected to... But that's not a bad thing. The big thing about this particular card is that it's the theoretical solution to exactly the problem you address in the rest of your message: limited userbase and usability of the currency. By having a debit card that you can fill up with bitcoins and use to pay real money with anywhere a "mastercard" or whatever is accepted, you suddenly increase the usability of the currency immensely. No need to go through a processor on the internet, getting your funds transferred to your bank or whatever... just whip out your card and pay.
One of the main reasons bitcoins don't really take off is that there is very little you can do for them, besides novelty items, hosting, vpn and such techno services, and of course the large black market segment. This card would essentially increase the potential use for the currency to EVERYTHING.
Actually that's not true. While the collected funds pay for public service radio as well, it's only the TV-receivers that have to pay.
But no, I don't have a radio - streaming audio entertainment over the network or downloading just the songs I wanted was feasible long before the same was true for video.
I don't think the ability to fiddle with the exchange rates is really something unique to this situation: a common way to get shafted when you travel abroad is that companies allow you to pay in your "home currency" on your credit card, thereby saving you the currency exchange surcharge from your card provider... and instead putting you on the hook for a price calculated with an incorrect exchange rate, giving the vendor or atm a direct profit.
Also I wouldn't speculate too much about how this would look because it isn't here yet, but there are bitcoin exchanges where you exchange your money for bitcoin or vice versa - if the card had bad exchange rates that would be an avenue to simply sidestep or even profit from that.