To be honest, I consider myself a libertarian at heart, as I side with liberals on a lot of social issues, as sort of a live-and-let-live person. But it's the big-government socialism that kills it for me, as I think that's an anathema to personal liberty, as well as ramping up the ever-increasing national dept, which is going to leave our children a hell of an economic hole to crawl out of. Absolutely inexcusable, and history is going to look very badly at us unless we bring it under control.
The white supremacists have been denounced time and time again by the mainstream of our party - and by Trump too, but no one seems to mention that. But let's face it... the Democrats are the home of the vast majority of blacks, and a majority of Hispanics. Unfortunately, that means racists really only have the Republicans as a home, despite the fact that we don't want them, and would rather court blacks and Hispanics, which we've been trying to do unsuccessfully for years. But I think we've got a long way to go, and need to fix a lot of things in our party. This election cycle certainly hasn't helped matters.
But what do I do if I believe, say, my anti-illegal immigration stance (based on issues like sovereignty, security, and economics) happens to align with a racist who "just wants to keep Mexicans out of the country?" Or if I oppose affirmative action on principles of true equality but someone else doesn't want to give blacks a hand up? I can't *help* it if my policy choice aligns with some asshole's racist ideals, and I fear few Democrats will truly believe my explanation, that I'm not secretly some racist.
It's admittedly an uncomfortable situation for many Republicans like me. But the Democrat's economic policies are just too insane for me to willingly give them a mandate. Besides, I think our country is moving towards more liberal social positions without putting the D's in power.
Years ago I worked at a company that had execs like them. We called them "the department of suck", because they somehow managed to suck the fun and creativity out of every project we worked on, often meddling with the design process in inexplicable and infuriating ways. I felt kinda bad for the designers that had to interact with them on a monthly basis.
Is it legal to voice support for "Trump for Woodchipper 2017", like some people supported "Clinton for Prison 2016"?
Not that I support the former, I just want to understand where the line is drawn.
So, you can't see the difference between advocating murder (which is how you get woodchippered) vs criminal sentencing by a court of law (which is how you get thrown in prison)? Because I think that's the oh-so-subtle line right there.
That just means you're probably older than 25. You probably still use e-mail too.
I think most adults don't use it, but know all the young people use it, so all the money men figure it's the Next Big Thing(tm), and are overvaluing it because they don't want to miss out on the Next Big Thing(tm), even though no one has a damn clue how anyone is going to actually make money from it, let alone $25B of revenue from it. But they know it's going to be BIG.
Same as Twitter, I think, although I have a feeling as soon as everyone figures out that no one actually wants to *buy* it as its current price, we're going to see a little air let out of that balloon.
One of the things that that I believe hinders civil discourse is the insistence by some on the left that everything Republicans do is motivated by racism, sexism, and bigotry. It honestly gets a bit hard to remain civil against the constant barrage of people leveling those types of horrible charges against you at every turn, but lashing out in turn does no good either. Granted, the right is pretty good at name-calling too (especially Trump, of course), but let's talk about what you just said.
Why do you feel that criticism of Obama is solely because of his race? Are you perhaps somewhat young? Because EVERY president is criticized by political opponents, regardless of their skin color. If anything, I think Republicans were a bit afraid of taking off the gloves, at least early on, precisely for fear of being labeled as such. Bush Jr was described as a war criminal, and Reagan was reviled by the left, who took every opportunity to mock and denigrate him. But with Obama, it's racism?
Let me ask you: does opposing the abuse of the H1B program automatically mean one is prejudiced again Indians? It's a ridiculous notion, right? But why is someone who opposes illegal immigration automatically a racist, simply because most of those illegal immigrants are Hispanic?
Sure, there are Republicans who are undoubtedly racist, homophobic, or bigoted, but I resent it when we all get painted with that very ugly brush. Most of the Republicans I know personally are very nice people, just like most of the Democrats I know are very nice people. Not bigoted. Not racist. Not sexist. But too many of them are all too willing to think the worst of their political opponents.
Japanese curry is an import from the UK, not from India, which gives it its Western credentials.
That's like calling spaghetti an American dish because it was introduced to someone by an American. Anyhow, my point is that it doesn't really matter what we think, as Japanese will continue to consider curry "western", even though it's not, and Americans will continue to think fortune cookies are Chinese, which they aren't. Meh.
Disclaimer: I'm not a Japanophile. I've just watched a lot of anime.
Exactly. And in Japan, curry (which is insanely popular, apparently) is considered "western food". Neither assumption is correct. Food is a bit like language that way, in how it gets borrowed and adapted in ways that make purists cry... but no one else cares, and enjoys their food.
I keep hoping one of the European countries implements a basic income system, so everyone else can see if it works well by freeing society from fear of abject poverty or implodes upon itself with overburdensome taxes on the most productive citizens.
Hey, we've just launched a crazy four-year right-wing experiment here, so it's up to someone else to try some crazy left-wing experiment elsewhere. Let's help each other out here!
Powerful electronics - super-computers of a few decades ago - are practically dirt cheap these days, and software costs are amortized over time and across many products. I don't see any reason why self-driving cars won't be affordable by the masses in the future. Sure, the first few iterations will be on high-end luxury vehicles. Fine with me. Let the 1%ers beta test the technology, and by the time it trickles down to the masses, it'll be commodity hardware that only adds a relatively modest amount to the price of an average vehicle.
I'm not sure how "technology won't get better and cheaper over time" is a defensible position, given even the most cursory look at recent history.
If you truly fear accidents, in a manual car you can choose to drive 20 mph everywhere you want.
No, you actually can't. It's illegal to impede the normal flow of traffic.
Beside which, being human, everyone is bound to make stupid mistakes when they're momentary distracted. At some point, we'll invent cars that are less likely to make dangerous mistakes, simply because they can see in every direction at once, and never, every get distracted, tired, drunk, or decide to check their smartphone or put on makeup or eat breakfast. And the point about it being an illusion is because a good portion of your safety is not even under your control, but in the hands of other drivers, which are not always possible to avoid.
To be clear, we're nowhere near that level yet, quite obviously, but I'm pretty sure we'll get there before too long.
> ** Cracking a password one character at a time until all the characters are filled in. Nope, passwords are an all or nothing proposition.
Many attacks against passwords/keys are character-at-a-time.
To clarify, I'm talking about scenes where a password character is *found* by some cracking algorithm, visually represented by randomly flipping characters and digits, which then lock into place one by one. It's essentially a Hollywood-invented password-cracking progress bar. Sort of like this, although they're just decoding screens of text (which is equally silly). You're talking about iteration over all possible combinations, which is of course how brute-forcing passwords works.
I think, psychologically speaking, that people are more scared of things that feel out of their control. As such, even though flying is statically far safer than driving, as a passenger, you have no control over your safety. I think it's the same thing when trusting a computer with driving your car. It *feels* like you have more control when you're driving manually, and so you feel safer. Of course, the safety is something of an illusion, since so much of your safety relies on other people driving safely as well.
I have a feeling that in 20 or 30 years, autonomous cars will be so safe that you're only going to only hear about fatal accidents when people are driving manually, and you're going to start seeing conversations about whether people should be allowed to drive themselves.
*** Cracking a password one character at a time until all the characters are filled in. Nope, passwords are an all or nothing proposition.
*** Hacking/coding as a real-time activity (e.g. furiously typing code to block another hacker in real-time). Actual programmers roll their eyes here, knowing how painfully slow writing and testing code is in real life.
(albeit boring as fuck) scenes and sequences.
Aaaand, you just hit on why Hollywood doesn't show reality. Reality tends to be boring as fuck 99.9% of the time. Movies are (typically) meant to entertain people, not educate them. That tends to be a bit of a problem when idiots can't distinguish Hollywood from reality, but what are you going to do? It typically hits home when Hollywood delves into a topic that the viewer knows very well, and they leave the theater thinking "couldn't they have just asked a professional _____ about those scenes?"
Yes, but you're arguing "if they were only competent, they could do x and y..." Obviously, they're not competent enough to even properly hash and salt usernames/passwords properly. So, of course they're not going to do anything else sensible, like what you're describing.
Actually, I saw someone in a previous thread blaming Reagan for some problem or other in California schools. It's pretty amazing how far back political blame can go.
If only Obama weren't black, I'm sure all those Republicans would have loved the Democratic president, just like they loved Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, right?
Slashdot Mirror
To be honest, I consider myself a libertarian at heart, as I side with liberals on a lot of social issues, as sort of a live-and-let-live person. But it's the big-government socialism that kills it for me, as I think that's an anathema to personal liberty, as well as ramping up the ever-increasing national dept, which is going to leave our children a hell of an economic hole to crawl out of. Absolutely inexcusable, and history is going to look very badly at us unless we bring it under control.
The white supremacists have been denounced time and time again by the mainstream of our party - and by Trump too, but no one seems to mention that. But let's face it... the Democrats are the home of the vast majority of blacks, and a majority of Hispanics. Unfortunately, that means racists really only have the Republicans as a home, despite the fact that we don't want them, and would rather court blacks and Hispanics, which we've been trying to do unsuccessfully for years. But I think we've got a long way to go, and need to fix a lot of things in our party. This election cycle certainly hasn't helped matters.
But what do I do if I believe, say, my anti-illegal immigration stance (based on issues like sovereignty, security, and economics) happens to align with a racist who "just wants to keep Mexicans out of the country?" Or if I oppose affirmative action on principles of true equality but someone else doesn't want to give blacks a hand up? I can't *help* it if my policy choice aligns with some asshole's racist ideals, and I fear few Democrats will truly believe my explanation, that I'm not secretly some racist.
It's admittedly an uncomfortable situation for many Republicans like me. But the Democrat's economic policies are just too insane for me to willingly give them a mandate. Besides, I think our country is moving towards more liberal social positions without putting the D's in power.
Here's a list of 547 banks that have failed since 2000.
Maybe it's just the ones that didn't donate enough to those in political power. You know... the ones that weren't too big to fail.
Years ago I worked at a company that had execs like them. We called them "the department of suck", because they somehow managed to suck the fun and creativity out of every project we worked on, often meddling with the design process in inexplicable and infuriating ways. I felt kinda bad for the designers that had to interact with them on a monthly basis.
Is it legal to voice support for "Trump for Woodchipper 2017", like some people supported "Clinton for Prison 2016"?
Not that I support the former, I just want to understand where the line is drawn.
So, you can't see the difference between advocating murder (which is how you get woodchippered) vs criminal sentencing by a court of law (which is how you get thrown in prison)? Because I think that's the oh-so-subtle line right there.
That just means you're probably older than 25. You probably still use e-mail too.
I think most adults don't use it, but know all the young people use it, so all the money men figure it's the Next Big Thing(tm), and are overvaluing it because they don't want to miss out on the Next Big Thing(tm), even though no one has a damn clue how anyone is going to actually make money from it, let alone $25B of revenue from it. But they know it's going to be BIG.
Same as Twitter, I think, although I have a feeling as soon as everyone figures out that no one actually wants to *buy* it as its current price, we're going to see a little air let out of that balloon.
One of the things that that I believe hinders civil discourse is the insistence by some on the left that everything Republicans do is motivated by racism, sexism, and bigotry. It honestly gets a bit hard to remain civil against the constant barrage of people leveling those types of horrible charges against you at every turn, but lashing out in turn does no good either. Granted, the right is pretty good at name-calling too (especially Trump, of course), but let's talk about what you just said.
Why do you feel that criticism of Obama is solely because of his race? Are you perhaps somewhat young? Because EVERY president is criticized by political opponents, regardless of their skin color. If anything, I think Republicans were a bit afraid of taking off the gloves, at least early on, precisely for fear of being labeled as such. Bush Jr was described as a war criminal, and Reagan was reviled by the left, who took every opportunity to mock and denigrate him. But with Obama, it's racism?
Let me ask you: does opposing the abuse of the H1B program automatically mean one is prejudiced again Indians? It's a ridiculous notion, right? But why is someone who opposes illegal immigration automatically a racist, simply because most of those illegal immigrants are Hispanic?
Sure, there are Republicans who are undoubtedly racist, homophobic, or bigoted, but I resent it when we all get painted with that very ugly brush. Most of the Republicans I know personally are very nice people, just like most of the Democrats I know are very nice people. Not bigoted. Not racist. Not sexist. But too many of them are all too willing to think the worst of their political opponents.
Japanese curry is an import from the UK, not from India, which gives it its Western credentials.
That's like calling spaghetti an American dish because it was introduced to someone by an American. Anyhow, my point is that it doesn't really matter what we think, as Japanese will continue to consider curry "western", even though it's not, and Americans will continue to think fortune cookies are Chinese, which they aren't. Meh.
Disclaimer: I'm not a Japanophile. I've just watched a lot of anime.
Exactly. And in Japan, curry (which is insanely popular, apparently) is considered "western food". Neither assumption is correct. Food is a bit like language that way, in how it gets borrowed and adapted in ways that make purists cry... but no one else cares, and enjoys their food.
Just refuse to acknowledge daylight saving time and you should be fine.
Who in their right mind would ever implement a Java-based API on their smartphone given the Oracle-Google lawsuit?
People lie on the internet, and algorithms don't know any better. Fake-news at 11.
I think it would be a lot funnier to play the sounds of screeching brakes whenever a pedestrian walks in front of your car.
And I want the sound of Darth Vader's Tie Fighter when I'm moving, and laser fire for the horn. "I have you now!" Pew-pew!
I keep hoping one of the European countries implements a basic income system, so everyone else can see if it works well by freeing society from fear of abject poverty or implodes upon itself with overburdensome taxes on the most productive citizens.
Hey, we've just launched a crazy four-year right-wing experiment here, so it's up to someone else to try some crazy left-wing experiment elsewhere. Let's help each other out here!
Powerful electronics - super-computers of a few decades ago - are practically dirt cheap these days, and software costs are amortized over time and across many products. I don't see any reason why self-driving cars won't be affordable by the masses in the future. Sure, the first few iterations will be on high-end luxury vehicles. Fine with me. Let the 1%ers beta test the technology, and by the time it trickles down to the masses, it'll be commodity hardware that only adds a relatively modest amount to the price of an average vehicle.
I'm not sure how "technology won't get better and cheaper over time" is a defensible position, given even the most cursory look at recent history.
Pfft, why bother with all that work when you could just launch a cyber-nuke? Amateur. ;-)
If you truly fear accidents, in a manual car you can choose to drive 20 mph everywhere you want.
No, you actually can't. It's illegal to impede the normal flow of traffic.
Beside which, being human, everyone is bound to make stupid mistakes when they're momentary distracted. At some point, we'll invent cars that are less likely to make dangerous mistakes, simply because they can see in every direction at once, and never, every get distracted, tired, drunk, or decide to check their smartphone or put on makeup or eat breakfast. And the point about it being an illusion is because a good portion of your safety is not even under your control, but in the hands of other drivers, which are not always possible to avoid.
To be clear, we're nowhere near that level yet, quite obviously, but I'm pretty sure we'll get there before too long.
> ** Cracking a password one character at a time until all the characters are filled in. Nope, passwords are an all or nothing proposition.
Many attacks against passwords/keys are character-at-a-time.
To clarify, I'm talking about scenes where a password character is *found* by some cracking algorithm, visually represented by randomly flipping characters and digits, which then lock into place one by one. It's essentially a Hollywood-invented password-cracking progress bar. Sort of like this, although they're just decoding screens of text (which is equally silly). You're talking about iteration over all possible combinations, which is of course how brute-forcing passwords works.
In contrast, I present to you, The Most Accurate Hacking Scene Ever. I guarantee you'll actually even learn a thing or two.
I think, psychologically speaking, that people are more scared of things that feel out of their control. As such, even though flying is statically far safer than driving, as a passenger, you have no control over your safety. I think it's the same thing when trusting a computer with driving your car. It *feels* like you have more control when you're driving manually, and so you feel safer. Of course, the safety is something of an illusion, since so much of your safety relies on other people driving safely as well.
I have a feeling that in 20 or 30 years, autonomous cars will be so safe that you're only going to only hear about fatal accidents when people are driving manually, and you're going to start seeing conversations about whether people should be allowed to drive themselves.
Well, duh, it takes a while for really large transfers. I mean, that's a lot of digital money to move through those internet pipes, right?
You forgot:
*** Cracking a password one character at a time until all the characters are filled in. Nope, passwords are an all or nothing proposition.
*** Hacking/coding as a real-time activity (e.g. furiously typing code to block another hacker in real-time). Actual programmers roll their eyes here, knowing how painfully slow writing and testing code is in real life.
(albeit boring as fuck) scenes and sequences.
Aaaand, you just hit on why Hollywood doesn't show reality. Reality tends to be boring as fuck 99.9% of the time. Movies are (typically) meant to entertain people, not educate them. That tends to be a bit of a problem when idiots can't distinguish Hollywood from reality, but what are you going to do? It typically hits home when Hollywood delves into a topic that the viewer knows very well, and they leave the theater thinking "couldn't they have just asked a professional _____ about those scenes?"
Yes, but you're arguing "if they were only competent, they could do x and y..." Obviously, they're not competent enough to even properly hash and salt usernames/passwords properly. So, of course they're not going to do anything else sensible, like what you're describing.
The left claims the Constitution is a "living document" that can change without needing any official vote, so what is there to be afraid of?
Trump appointing constructionist Supreme Court judges?
Actually, I saw someone in a previous thread blaming Reagan for some problem or other in California schools. It's pretty amazing how far back political blame can go.
If only Obama weren't black, I'm sure all those Republicans would have loved the Democratic president, just like they loved Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, right?
Dear Internet of Things,
First, fix your damned security problems. Then we'll talk about your "demands".
Sincerely,
The rest of the internet