If you read the article, it appears they propose preserving the DNA strands artificially.
The long-term stability of data encoded in DNA was reported in February 2015, in an article by researches from ETH Zurich. By adding redundancy via Reed–Solomon error correction coding and by encapsulating the DNA within silica glass spheres via Sol-gel chemistry, the researchers predict error-free information recovery after up to 1 million years at -18 C and 2000 years if stored at 10 C.
Other than a having certain coolness factor in using nature's own data encoding scheme, it seems like it would make a lot more sense to etch data into crystals or glass using lasers, or other such solid state data storage that's currently being researched - essentially bypassing the "natural" encoding and jumping straight to their proposed long-term storage medium as the storage method itself. But what the hell do I know...? It does sound like pretty interesting research, even if nothing practical ever comes of it. Early research often seems utterly impractical at first.
Let's not start legislating / regulating the crap out of a new industry before we see real problems emerge. I'm not even sure how you could justify "banning exclusives" when these services are producing their own original content, and such legislation would probably be on shaky legal ground even were that not the case.
More to the point, while multiple players means you may have to pay for multiple services, these services are all directly competing with each other, which puts natural market pressure on keeping prices under control. At the moment, you could pretty much subscribe to most of the major streaming services (which seem to average around $10 or so) right now for significantly less than even a minimal package (let's say $65/mo), let alone the average cable bill of $100 a month. We certainly aren't anywhere close to the point that we're paying more for streaming, so I don't quite share your concerns about having to subscribe to a couple of services.
Actually, it's our new "entertainment" overlords. Are people really okay with a single company not only controlling a huge amount of media content creation, but the (occasionally exclusive) delivery mechanism for that media as well? That seems tailor made for a built-in conflict of interest right there. These media conglomerates are getting ridiculous. I mean, thank goodness we actually have an alternative to cable TV in streaming media these days, but even so, a lot of people still rely on cable modems for their internet as well.
What's perhaps most irritating to me is the notion that a company ends up getting so big that you can barely avoid doing any business with it. It will be a cold day in hell before I subscribe to Comcast cable again in my lifetime, but must I now avoid all Dreamworks films as well (or at least *paying* for them), assuming this deal happens?
Also, thank you for realizing that I was talking about *fresh* water, and not a decrease in the global water supply, for what I hope would be blindingly obvious reasons./facepalm
I was wondering if someone could explain the reasoning behind these statements in the article:
As temperatures go up, glaciers melt and ocean levels rise. Climate change also exacerbates water scarcity worldwide.
Why would water become more scarce? Water weather evaporates more water, sure. But it also saturates the atmosphere and comes back down again. Many of our planet's warmer climates near the equator aren't exactly dry. Whether or not an area is a rainforest or a desert seems to have to do more with geography than anything else. Am I missing something, or is the article just making an unfounded assumption?
To be honest, I've never quite figured out why slightly increased global temperatures is necessarily a net bad thing, assuming we don't see some catastrophic runaway greenhouse effect, of course. One significant downside seems to be the rise in sea level, and something like that is going to take place over a very long time, meaning some coastal cities will likely become more "Venice-like", while other communities may simply retreat inland over time. The other obvious one would be a potential increase in frequency and intensity of hurricanes, which thrive in warmer areas. But if I had to choose between global warming and global cooling, I'm pretty sure I know which one I'd choose.
That's why I need to ask, does Android need to be rewritten using the Rust programming language?
Well, you can certainly ask... But rewriting over fifteen million lines of code (not to mention the billions of lines written to those C-based APIs) built, tested, hardened, and tested over the course of decades is a non-starter. And besides that, no matter how perfect a *language* is, programmers will still find ways of screwing up by the numbers. C does make that easier, of course, but I don't believe there's a way to avoid the problem completely. And like it or not, our computer infrastructure is likely to remain based on C for decades to come simply due to sheer inertia.
What we can perhaps *practically* achieve is a new attitude and awareness about patching and supporting these devices for a reasonable lifetime. The carriers and manufacturers simply need to get out of the damned way, or else we may ultimately have to legislate them out of the way - and I don't like going there if it can at all be avoided. Google is slowly moving towards putting core components into the Play store, where they can be patched without interference by anyone. I definitely think that's a move in the correct direction. And manufacturers need to understand that they're selling tiny computers on which people store the most intimate details of their lives, not throwaway hardware toys, with all the responsibility that entails.
It's hard to predict what will happen when we start to approach "peak smartphone" market saturation as smartphones themselves continue to stabilize in form and function. On the one hand, slowing technical and functional growth is likely to have a stabilizing influence on the software simply because of less churn. Unfortunately, a shrinking market may put pressure on manufacturers to reduce already miserable long-term support.
They just want to have more women participants, full stop.
Arbitrarily dictating equality of results is the wrong way to go about these things. You can only fairly ensure that everyone has equality of opportunity. Otherwise, it's the very definition of sexism, regardless of good intentions.
That being said, I'd have no problem with putting some effort and care into making sure women are made to feel welcome. I have to admit though, I really dislike the use of the term "safe space", because it implies that these sorts of events are "unsafe" for women by default. It's insulting to anyone who values the contributions and participation of all people regardless of their sex, race, etc and would never tolerating making them feel uncomfortable in any way.
I think the need to believe in an all-powerful God stems largely from humans own powerlessness in our lives, and ultimately, when facing our own mortality. The notion that he created the universe is probably a secondary concern, simply used to establish God's bona-fides, or perhaps to express ultimate authority. After all, if you make it, it naturally belongs to you.
Organized religion is also a way of encouraging moral or socially acceptable behavior, with the ever present threat of eternal damnation for committing sins, even if you got away with it during your mortal existence. And again, anything but an all-powerful God is less useful, because then you could fool God just as easily as other people, and you'd lose the power of the threat of divine punishment for wrongs committed.
Actually, tech writers all but wrote off PCs a few years ago, declaring it a dead or dying platform. From what I can see, PCs just settled into a more specialized role as content creation platforms, contrary to phones, tablets, and consoles, which are more suited for content consumption.
Still, it's probably only the tech media (and manufacturers, of course) that are really worried about this, because they're the ones who write about smartphones. So, there's a built-in bias regarding the desired interest in seeing new and shiny devices coming out each year, because that interest is tied to their ability to earn a living writing about those devices. How many people get all excited about a new model of oven ranges or refrigerators? It must terrify tech writers to think about smartphones becoming as mundane as other appliances.
I don't think anyone can reasonably claim "adds very little to the cost", but my guess would be that, relative to the price of the entire building, it's probably not a *substantial* cost. Moreover, if the building is designed for solar panels from the beginning and they're installed while the building is going up, those costs are probably lower than retrofitting after construction.
Honestly, I'm not a huge fan of government over-regulation, but it's not like there isn't a precedent for this sort of thing. We already have all sorts of building codes for all aspects of construction for very good reason (naturally, *some* regulation is absolutely required). In case people aren't aware, the local government can even force developers to pay for the costs of local road, sidewalk, environmental, or other area infrastructure improvements before they approve building permits.
And lastly, in a place with a good deal of sun and that's perpetually energy-hungry (and will get moreso as we start ditching gasoline in greater quantities), adding solar panels to reduce the peak-time load on the electrical grid makes a lot of sense. SF does a lot of nutty, left-wing things, but honestly, this doesn't strike me as anything too outrageous. My preference would have been to add incentives rather than make it mandatory, but in general, I guess I'd have to say I support the idea, if not the exact method. And of course, I'd hope that provisions exist for reasonable exceptions where they make sense.
I'm not so sure I agree. This feels a lot more like the scientific equivalent of believing in an all-powerful, all-knowing God that created the universe. Or if you rather, call it philosophy with a technical twist. The article itself all but admits that, mentioning the "Descartes approach", which is to muse about the implications of this from the top down. Philosophy, in other words.
It seems to me like the notion that any civilization will ever have the computational horsepower to simulate an entire universe at the subatomic level is borderline absurd not in terms of theory, but in practicality, given the fact that we'll inevitably run into hard physical limitations in our own quest for greater computational power. Granted, this may not apply to a non-simulated universe whose rules differ from our own, but then you're taking the equivalent leap of faith as saying "but in a universe where magic exists...", and again, you're delving into philosophy/religion/mysticism/thought experiments at that point.
I was under the impression that it now supports DLNA. I don't have a PS4 myself, so I'm just going by what the internet says. Also, most all the major streaming sites have dedicated apps for both PS4 and Xbone - Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, Twitch, etc. I wouldn't have even thought of suggesting someone use a browser to on a console.
True, the Xbox One is much more media-focused. Still, keep in mind that you can (to my understanding) still use your PS4 for many media-related tasks, like streaming internet video or playing media from a DNLA server. A lot of people are cutting the cable, so really have no need for a DVR.
I seem to recall pundits predicting that this current generation of consoles would be the last *ever*... that no one was interested in home consoles any more because smartphones were eating up the market. That seems a bit ridiculous now, especially as consoles evolve into more general-purpose home entertainment platforms. And naturally, we've been hearing about the impending death of PC gaming for... what, well over a decade now? Somebody should tell all those companies collectively sinking billions into VR research and development.
To me, the argument that consoles (or PCs) are doomed is like saying that three and four star restaurants will all be put out of business because fast food restaurants are so much cheaper, convenient, and popular. It ignores the fact that there are different market segments that will always exist because the different segments provide vastly different experiences. Does anyone think a hard-core gamer will be satisfied with playing on a 6" screen with a touch-screen versus a 60" TV with monster speakers and an ergonomic, purpose-built game controller, or using a high-end PC with precision controllers and dedicated gaming hardware (like the new VR equipment)? Is anyone stupid enough to believe that you can even build the exact same sort of games for all different platforms, given their different form factors?
More to the point, just because the market for smartphone-based games is increasing doesn't mean it has the same demographics as the console market, nor does it mean that, even for those in the same demographic, that person even could use a console when they're playing a phone-based game. After all, they could be anywhere, like on a plane or in a hotel room, since that's the obvious virtue of mobile platforms: they're always available.
Generally speaking, I think there's a lot less competition between mobile and traditional games than most people believe. I believe it represents a fairly large expansion of the gaming market, and not just a shift from one platform to another, even if some migration is inevitable.
Please don't mistake my insistence on preserving our liberties as any indication that I believe we shouldn't investigate and prosecute these monsters to any possible legal extent. That's a terribly unfair argument to make. Note that I was talking about the "idea" of these evils that were becoming banal. But if your heart doesn't weep after actually hearing (let alone seeing) some of the atrocious things that are done to these innocent children, then you probably don't have much of a heart left.
But using that most natural of protective instincts against us to erode our liberties should also be deserving of scorn, because we simply can't help but to want to do everything in our power to keep our children safe, and those who cynically employ such strategies damn well know it.
I truly cannot tell who the bad guys are, anymore. but likely, if someone is 'here to help' they are likely a bad guy. my, now things have flipped on us!
I'm not sure I'm quite that cynical yet, as I believe most people are still fundamentally good, even if a bit self-serving at times. I still assume that most of these people have the best of intentions, but are dangerously misguided in their narrow focus to ferret out those who would genuinely attempt to do us harm without looking at the big picture in their zealous pursuit of policy to benefit their investigations.
Those charged with protecting us really need to acquire some serendipity - in other words, learning to understand that there are some things too precious to lose, even in the name of protecting lives. One of the drawbacks of a free and open society like ours is the absolute impossibility of preventing someone from doing harm to others, especially if they're willing to forfeit their lives in the process. Nor is it possible to always prevent monsters from harming innocent children, although every decent instinct in us screams at us to try.
Extremism in the pursuit of security, especially when it comes at the cost of liberty or privacy, is most certainly not a virtue. It's an insidious slippery slope that's all too easy to start sliding down, even with the best of intentions. And we also have to assume that not *all* intentions are so benign, or, more to the point, we can't know if *future* governments will restrain themselves even if the current government does, once that power is acquired.
What's really sad is that the government has actually managed to desensitize me to at least the *idea* of something as vile as child porn and terrorism. I now mostly associate it with attempts to stomp out a tiny bit more of our freedom. Congratulations, government.
The future is now, and simple "win-win" strategies are no longer good enough! We're only going to accept 110%... no make that 120% effort and "win-win-win" results. Of course, if other countries adopt "win-win-win-win" strategies, rest assured we'll be looking at future "win-win-win-win-win" initiatives even more closely. Energy bill bipartisanship FTWWW!
Ah, yeah, I misunderstood, and see what you're getting at now.
Of course, I would sort of had figured it was somewhat self-evident, since Google attempts to index the entire web, and I'd imagine most people at Google thought the same thing. Naturally some of those will be malicious by nature. Another poster elsewhere made the analogy that some of the phone numbers in the phone book would undoubtedly put you in touch with some very bad / dangerous people, and it seemed a reasonable comparison, at least as analogies go.
As a side note, I thought it was sort of weird how someone with a Google+ tag would accuse Google of deliberately sending users to malicious sites... but then again, this is slashdot.
Because when they do realize it, they block the site and warn the user?
Google has every incentive to make the web as safe an experience as possible for its users. Without those users coming to use their services by the hundreds of millions, they don't generate all that ad revenue. There's no profit in intentionally allowing a user to become infected by a bad site.
In case you missed it, we've paid a bit of attention to WW2 as well over the years. Also, funny you mention the atomic bombs, since those were relatively minor killers compared to firebombings and other deaths in that war from far more mundane sources. Now why would you specifically mention those?
It's because, like it or not, you've just aptly demonstrated that the circumstances surrounding deaths are as important or even more important than the numbers. It's not logical, but damned if humans have ever been logical. I'd presume that some of the reaction to Titanic was the fact that this ship represented one of the biggest, most visible technological achievement of humankind, so to have her sink on her maiden voyage was a bit of a shock to the psyche of the average citizen.
But really, more to the point, Titanic is a compelling story, in the same vein of classic Shakespearean tragedies. Man's hubris challenges God/nature ("God himself could not sink this ship"), and after a perfect storm of events and mistakes, man is proven to be quite fallible, with tragic consequences for the innocent souls on board. There are many individual stories as well. The stoic, grim professionalism that saw the ship's orchestra continue to play when their own doom was at hand. The gentleman and his manservant who adorned their tuxedos, declaring that they would "meet their end as gentleman." The woman who refused to be evacuated without her husband, and insisted her maid take her own place in the lifeboat.
How could these stories not capture the hearts of people?
Slashdot Mirror
If you read the article, it appears they propose preserving the DNA strands artificially.
The long-term stability of data encoded in DNA was reported in February 2015, in an article by researches from ETH Zurich. By adding redundancy via Reed–Solomon error correction coding and by encapsulating the DNA within silica glass spheres via Sol-gel chemistry, the researchers predict error-free information recovery after up to 1 million years at -18 C and 2000 years if stored at 10 C.
Other than a having certain coolness factor in using nature's own data encoding scheme, it seems like it would make a lot more sense to etch data into crystals or glass using lasers, or other such solid state data storage that's currently being researched - essentially bypassing the "natural" encoding and jumping straight to their proposed long-term storage medium as the storage method itself. But what the hell do I know...? It does sound like pretty interesting research, even if nothing practical ever comes of it. Early research often seems utterly impractical at first.
Let's not start legislating / regulating the crap out of a new industry before we see real problems emerge. I'm not even sure how you could justify "banning exclusives" when these services are producing their own original content, and such legislation would probably be on shaky legal ground even were that not the case.
More to the point, while multiple players means you may have to pay for multiple services, these services are all directly competing with each other, which puts natural market pressure on keeping prices under control. At the moment, you could pretty much subscribe to most of the major streaming services (which seem to average around $10 or so) right now for significantly less than even a minimal package (let's say $65/mo), let alone the average cable bill of $100 a month. We certainly aren't anywhere close to the point that we're paying more for streaming, so I don't quite share your concerns about having to subscribe to a couple of services.
Actually, it's our new "entertainment" overlords. Are people really okay with a single company not only controlling a huge amount of media content creation, but the (occasionally exclusive) delivery mechanism for that media as well? That seems tailor made for a built-in conflict of interest right there. These media conglomerates are getting ridiculous. I mean, thank goodness we actually have an alternative to cable TV in streaming media these days, but even so, a lot of people still rely on cable modems for their internet as well.
What's perhaps most irritating to me is the notion that a company ends up getting so big that you can barely avoid doing any business with it. It will be a cold day in hell before I subscribe to Comcast cable again in my lifetime, but must I now avoid all Dreamworks films as well (or at least *paying* for them), assuming this deal happens?
An excellent point, thank you.
Also, thank you for realizing that I was talking about *fresh* water, and not a decrease in the global water supply, for what I hope would be blindingly obvious reasons. /facepalm
I was wondering if someone could explain the reasoning behind these statements in the article:
As temperatures go up, glaciers melt and ocean levels rise. Climate change also exacerbates water scarcity worldwide.
Why would water become more scarce? Water weather evaporates more water, sure. But it also saturates the atmosphere and comes back down again. Many of our planet's warmer climates near the equator aren't exactly dry. Whether or not an area is a rainforest or a desert seems to have to do more with geography than anything else. Am I missing something, or is the article just making an unfounded assumption?
To be honest, I've never quite figured out why slightly increased global temperatures is necessarily a net bad thing, assuming we don't see some catastrophic runaway greenhouse effect, of course. One significant downside seems to be the rise in sea level, and something like that is going to take place over a very long time, meaning some coastal cities will likely become more "Venice-like", while other communities may simply retreat inland over time. The other obvious one would be a potential increase in frequency and intensity of hurricanes, which thrive in warmer areas. But if I had to choose between global warming and global cooling, I'm pretty sure I know which one I'd choose.
That's why I need to ask, does Android need to be rewritten using the Rust programming language?
Well, you can certainly ask... But rewriting over fifteen million lines of code (not to mention the billions of lines written to those C-based APIs) built, tested, hardened, and tested over the course of decades is a non-starter. And besides that, no matter how perfect a *language* is, programmers will still find ways of screwing up by the numbers. C does make that easier, of course, but I don't believe there's a way to avoid the problem completely. And like it or not, our computer infrastructure is likely to remain based on C for decades to come simply due to sheer inertia.
What we can perhaps *practically* achieve is a new attitude and awareness about patching and supporting these devices for a reasonable lifetime. The carriers and manufacturers simply need to get out of the damned way, or else we may ultimately have to legislate them out of the way - and I don't like going there if it can at all be avoided. Google is slowly moving towards putting core components into the Play store, where they can be patched without interference by anyone. I definitely think that's a move in the correct direction. And manufacturers need to understand that they're selling tiny computers on which people store the most intimate details of their lives, not throwaway hardware toys, with all the responsibility that entails.
It's hard to predict what will happen when we start to approach "peak smartphone" market saturation as smartphones themselves continue to stabilize in form and function. On the one hand, slowing technical and functional growth is likely to have a stabilizing influence on the software simply because of less churn. Unfortunately, a shrinking market may put pressure on manufacturers to reduce already miserable long-term support.
Even when the sky is mostly clear, some people still gaze sadly at the clouds, waiting for the impending rain.
Remember, Google was just a search engine to start with. And obviously, successful side projects don't stay side projects.
They just want to have more women participants, full stop.
Arbitrarily dictating equality of results is the wrong way to go about these things. You can only fairly ensure that everyone has equality of opportunity. Otherwise, it's the very definition of sexism, regardless of good intentions.
That being said, I'd have no problem with putting some effort and care into making sure women are made to feel welcome. I have to admit though, I really dislike the use of the term "safe space", because it implies that these sorts of events are "unsafe" for women by default. It's insulting to anyone who values the contributions and participation of all people regardless of their sex, race, etc and would never tolerating making them feel uncomfortable in any way.
I think the need to believe in an all-powerful God stems largely from humans own powerlessness in our lives, and ultimately, when facing our own mortality. The notion that he created the universe is probably a secondary concern, simply used to establish God's bona-fides, or perhaps to express ultimate authority. After all, if you make it, it naturally belongs to you.
Organized religion is also a way of encouraging moral or socially acceptable behavior, with the ever present threat of eternal damnation for committing sins, even if you got away with it during your mortal existence. And again, anything but an all-powerful God is less useful, because then you could fool God just as easily as other people, and you'd lose the power of the threat of divine punishment for wrongs committed.
Actually, tech writers all but wrote off PCs a few years ago, declaring it a dead or dying platform. From what I can see, PCs just settled into a more specialized role as content creation platforms, contrary to phones, tablets, and consoles, which are more suited for content consumption.
Still, it's probably only the tech media (and manufacturers, of course) that are really worried about this, because they're the ones who write about smartphones. So, there's a built-in bias regarding the desired interest in seeing new and shiny devices coming out each year, because that interest is tied to their ability to earn a living writing about those devices. How many people get all excited about a new model of oven ranges or refrigerators? It must terrify tech writers to think about smartphones becoming as mundane as other appliances.
I don't think anyone can reasonably claim "adds very little to the cost", but my guess would be that, relative to the price of the entire building, it's probably not a *substantial* cost. Moreover, if the building is designed for solar panels from the beginning and they're installed while the building is going up, those costs are probably lower than retrofitting after construction.
Honestly, I'm not a huge fan of government over-regulation, but it's not like there isn't a precedent for this sort of thing. We already have all sorts of building codes for all aspects of construction for very good reason (naturally, *some* regulation is absolutely required). In case people aren't aware, the local government can even force developers to pay for the costs of local road, sidewalk, environmental, or other area infrastructure improvements before they approve building permits.
And lastly, in a place with a good deal of sun and that's perpetually energy-hungry (and will get moreso as we start ditching gasoline in greater quantities), adding solar panels to reduce the peak-time load on the electrical grid makes a lot of sense. SF does a lot of nutty, left-wing things, but honestly, this doesn't strike me as anything too outrageous. My preference would have been to add incentives rather than make it mandatory, but in general, I guess I'd have to say I support the idea, if not the exact method. And of course, I'd hope that provisions exist for reasonable exceptions where they make sense.
I'm not so sure I agree. This feels a lot more like the scientific equivalent of believing in an all-powerful, all-knowing God that created the universe. Or if you rather, call it philosophy with a technical twist. The article itself all but admits that, mentioning the "Descartes approach", which is to muse about the implications of this from the top down. Philosophy, in other words.
It seems to me like the notion that any civilization will ever have the computational horsepower to simulate an entire universe at the subatomic level is borderline absurd not in terms of theory, but in practicality, given the fact that we'll inevitably run into hard physical limitations in our own quest for greater computational power. Granted, this may not apply to a non-simulated universe whose rules differ from our own, but then you're taking the equivalent leap of faith as saying "but in a universe where magic exists...", and again, you're delving into philosophy/religion/mysticism/thought experiments at that point.
Answer to headline: No, it's just way too damned expensive. With enough time and money, anything can be fixed.
Next?
I was under the impression that it now supports DLNA. I don't have a PS4 myself, so I'm just going by what the internet says. Also, most all the major streaming sites have dedicated apps for both PS4 and Xbone - Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, Twitch, etc. I wouldn't have even thought of suggesting someone use a browser to on a console.
True, the Xbox One is much more media-focused. Still, keep in mind that you can (to my understanding) still use your PS4 for many media-related tasks, like streaming internet video or playing media from a DNLA server. A lot of people are cutting the cable, so really have no need for a DVR.
I seem to recall pundits predicting that this current generation of consoles would be the last *ever*... that no one was interested in home consoles any more because smartphones were eating up the market. That seems a bit ridiculous now, especially as consoles evolve into more general-purpose home entertainment platforms. And naturally, we've been hearing about the impending death of PC gaming for... what, well over a decade now? Somebody should tell all those companies collectively sinking billions into VR research and development.
To me, the argument that consoles (or PCs) are doomed is like saying that three and four star restaurants will all be put out of business because fast food restaurants are so much cheaper, convenient, and popular. It ignores the fact that there are different market segments that will always exist because the different segments provide vastly different experiences. Does anyone think a hard-core gamer will be satisfied with playing on a 6" screen with a touch-screen versus a 60" TV with monster speakers and an ergonomic, purpose-built game controller, or using a high-end PC with precision controllers and dedicated gaming hardware (like the new VR equipment)? Is anyone stupid enough to believe that you can even build the exact same sort of games for all different platforms, given their different form factors?
More to the point, just because the market for smartphone-based games is increasing doesn't mean it has the same demographics as the console market, nor does it mean that, even for those in the same demographic, that person even could use a console when they're playing a phone-based game. After all, they could be anywhere, like on a plane or in a hotel room, since that's the obvious virtue of mobile platforms: they're always available.
Generally speaking, I think there's a lot less competition between mobile and traditional games than most people believe. I believe it represents a fairly large expansion of the gaming market, and not just a shift from one platform to another, even if some migration is inevitable.
Please don't mistake my insistence on preserving our liberties as any indication that I believe we shouldn't investigate and prosecute these monsters to any possible legal extent. That's a terribly unfair argument to make. Note that I was talking about the "idea" of these evils that were becoming banal. But if your heart doesn't weep after actually hearing (let alone seeing) some of the atrocious things that are done to these innocent children, then you probably don't have much of a heart left.
But using that most natural of protective instincts against us to erode our liberties should also be deserving of scorn, because we simply can't help but to want to do everything in our power to keep our children safe, and those who cynically employ such strategies damn well know it.
I truly cannot tell who the bad guys are, anymore. but likely, if someone is 'here to help' they are likely a bad guy. my, now things have flipped on us!
I'm not sure I'm quite that cynical yet, as I believe most people are still fundamentally good, even if a bit self-serving at times. I still assume that most of these people have the best of intentions, but are dangerously misguided in their narrow focus to ferret out those who would genuinely attempt to do us harm without looking at the big picture in their zealous pursuit of policy to benefit their investigations.
Those charged with protecting us really need to acquire some serendipity - in other words, learning to understand that there are some things too precious to lose, even in the name of protecting lives. One of the drawbacks of a free and open society like ours is the absolute impossibility of preventing someone from doing harm to others, especially if they're willing to forfeit their lives in the process. Nor is it possible to always prevent monsters from harming innocent children, although every decent instinct in us screams at us to try.
Extremism in the pursuit of security, especially when it comes at the cost of liberty or privacy, is most certainly not a virtue. It's an insidious slippery slope that's all too easy to start sliding down, even with the best of intentions. And we also have to assume that not *all* intentions are so benign, or, more to the point, we can't know if *future* governments will restrain themselves even if the current government does, once that power is acquired.
What's really sad is that the government has actually managed to desensitize me to at least the *idea* of something as vile as child porn and terrorism. I now mostly associate it with attempts to stomp out a tiny bit more of our freedom. Congratulations, government.
The future is now, and simple "win-win" strategies are no longer good enough! We're only going to accept 110%... no make that 120% effort and "win-win-win" results. Of course, if other countries adopt "win-win-win-win" strategies, rest assured we'll be looking at future "win-win-win-win-win" initiatives even more closely. Energy bill bipartisanship FTWWW!
The Japanese use English in very interesting ways that sound ridiculous to us.
Ah, yeah, I misunderstood, and see what you're getting at now.
Of course, I would sort of had figured it was somewhat self-evident, since Google attempts to index the entire web, and I'd imagine most people at Google thought the same thing. Naturally some of those will be malicious by nature. Another poster elsewhere made the analogy that some of the phone numbers in the phone book would undoubtedly put you in touch with some very bad / dangerous people, and it seemed a reasonable comparison, at least as analogies go.
As a side note, I thought it was sort of weird how someone with a Google+ tag would accuse Google of deliberately sending users to malicious sites... but then again, this is slashdot.
Because when they do realize it, they block the site and warn the user?
Google has every incentive to make the web as safe an experience as possible for its users. Without those users coming to use their services by the hundreds of millions, they don't generate all that ad revenue. There's no profit in intentionally allowing a user to become infected by a bad site.
In case you missed it, we've paid a bit of attention to WW2 as well over the years. Also, funny you mention the atomic bombs, since those were relatively minor killers compared to firebombings and other deaths in that war from far more mundane sources. Now why would you specifically mention those?
It's because, like it or not, you've just aptly demonstrated that the circumstances surrounding deaths are as important or even more important than the numbers. It's not logical, but damned if humans have ever been logical. I'd presume that some of the reaction to Titanic was the fact that this ship represented one of the biggest, most visible technological achievement of humankind, so to have her sink on her maiden voyage was a bit of a shock to the psyche of the average citizen.
But really, more to the point, Titanic is a compelling story, in the same vein of classic Shakespearean tragedies. Man's hubris challenges God/nature ("God himself could not sink this ship"), and after a perfect storm of events and mistakes, man is proven to be quite fallible, with tragic consequences for the innocent souls on board. There are many individual stories as well. The stoic, grim professionalism that saw the ship's orchestra continue to play when their own doom was at hand. The gentleman and his manservant who adorned their tuxedos, declaring that they would "meet their end as gentleman." The woman who refused to be evacuated without her husband, and insisted her maid take her own place in the lifeboat.
How could these stories not capture the hearts of people?