Wow! You mean instead of three interchangeable TV news sources, we now have six? Why, their opinions must collectively be twice as diverse!
Only, not, because they're all owned by titanic media conglomerates run by incredibly wealthy folks who, quite understandably, tend toward a conservative bent. (Fox is merely the most obvious about it.) There wasn't much difference between ABC, NBC, and CBS to begin with. But no, no, there's no media consolidation, because we have six whole TV networks instead of three. Nevermind that there's lots of other kinds of news media -- radio stations and newspapers, for example -- which have undergone drastic consolidation in the past few decades. No, because there's a couple more sources for TV news, there's no consolidation to worry about!
Diebold whines about how the source code to their voting software is secret and copyrighted and blah blah... but you know what? Accurate democratic elections easily outweigh the need of any company providing voting software to keep their software secret. The government ought to be hiring a software company on contract to provide the service of writing voting software, not buying a product from them.
This is assuming, of course, that there's any overall benefit to digital voting in the first place, which there really isn't. Digital elections are a terrible idea -- stick with paper. Oh no! We'll have to wait a few more hours to have complete results! Big fucking deal.
Truth is the slashdot effect is nothing like what it used to be when blog had decent articles (versus unchecked factas, duped, misinformation etc. in massive quantities).
Go back and browse slashdot articles from two, four, six, or even eight years ago. The quality hasn't gotten worse. Or really changed much at all, for that matter (Roland Piquepaille notwithstanding).
Lock ten marketdroids in a room and give them a task to try and create a marketing campaign for something impossible and ridiculous. Like a one-pixel digital camera.
I'm envisioning a sticker on the box that reads "THE ONLY MICRO-MEGAPIXEL CAMERA!"
Ever thought about separating the action from the emotion? How about, "I understand that you are angry with your sister. Sometimes people get angry with each other, even loved ones, and you are not a bad person for feeling angry. But practicing physical violence against those with whom you are angry is not ok."
That, as a matter of fact, is part of unconditional parenting. But you don't *stop* at "...is not ok." Leaving it at that doesn't do any good, because unless he *believes* it's wrong, he's not going to want to refrain from doing it in the future, and unless you help him learn to believe that it's wrong (by helping him understand why it harms people, and how they might feel because of that, for example), he's just going to dismiss it as parental blathering.
New age? What the hell are you talking about? This has nothing to do with "new age" philosophy. They're not remotely related.
But the punishment should fit the crime.
You've got a mindset problem. They're children, not criminals. Of course, I'm sure you've got a bunch of research studies ready at hand that support your beliefs. Right?
I haven't read the book, just the summary on the page
Well then I'm sure your opinions on the book you haven't read and have only just heard of are quite well-informed.
I also disagree with your sig from personal experience.
You know of a faster way to become an atheist? Do tell.
Though I have no children
I do. I don't encourage you to do so.
I'll read you're book if yout read this one
Ha! In point of fact, I have tried to read that book. I couldn't make it more than five pages before I gave up in disgust. I literally lost count of the logical fallacies and instances of wishful thinking.
"Unconditional Parenting," by contrast, is nicely footnoted with references to hundreds of scientific studies that support the author's hypotheses.
None of this, "Timmy, if you don't stop pulling your sister's hair I'll count to three and give you a time out." shit.. If the kid knows what he/she is doing is wrong, then he/she can be punished.
Unfortunately, it turns out that punishment is not a particular effective way to get children to stop doing "wrong" things. All it really does is teach them to avoid getting caught; they don't learn that the action itself is wrong, only that they'll get punished if they get caught. There's a fair body of research on this; a good introduction is the book "Unconditional Parenting" by Alfie Kohn.
In your example, the issue is that if Timmy knows what he's doing is considered wrong, then you're not going to get him to stop doing it by punishing him. You'll only get him to do it when he's fairly certain he won't get caught, and he'll lie about it, and learn to lie convincingly enough that he'll be able to get away with it. You need to find out WHY he does it even though he knows he'll get punished for it, and help him work out the underlying issues.
So why do parents that cannot provide for their offspring keep having children?
Because they're poor, and uneducated, and ignorant, and quite literally most of them do not understand how reproductive biology works. They know that sex makes babies, but it won't happen to them because they pulled out in time, or used a condom (which, as it turns out, aren't foolproof). Or they misjudged when they're fertile and don't use birth control, or they think birth control is pointless, and they got drunk and had sex anyway, or (specifically the men) think that condoms are for wimps, or etc. etc.
We can go around saying how it's their fault, and why should we help them; or we can realize that helping them will lower the crime rate, the birth rate (especially the rate of unwanted children), improve the economy, and make life better for everyone.
If you want to spin it the other way, just say that this proves that Bush and the Republicans are incapable of dealing with North Korea, they've let a nuclear madman loose onto the world, etc.:)
Isn't the point of open source that anyone can fix the programs?
That's one point. Another point is that if your company, for example, uses an open source application, you can hire someone to fix it instead of having to rely on the company that sells it.
Yet another point is transparency -- being able to know WHAT the software is really doing, instead of having to trust the company that sells it.
I was talking only about the Islamic extremists who are a byproduct of our meddling in the Middle East. I'm well aware that there are and have been plenty of other types and groups of terrorists throughout history, you cocksucking anonymous fuckbag.
Indeed it is a love of liberty that inspires citizens to give the federal government the powerful tools they need to wipe it out completely.
Yeah, see, this is what's called "horseshit," because terrorists are not ultra-powerful supervillains. They don't require any "tools" or laws we didn't already have before September 11th.
And yet somehow, fighting them requires taking away some of my Constitutional rights? Nope, actually, it doesn't help. Not one bit. Suspending habeas corpus? How does that help? We already have them in custody; they're not going anywhere! And besides, they're only suspects, just like anyone else accused of a crime. Innocent until proven guilty, that's our standard of law, and it's not like there's some need to prosecute these guys extra-fast. Once they're in custody, what justifiable reason is there to not give them the same due process anyone else would get? Justice is justice whether it's being applied to a citizen or a foreign national. Let's not forget the guys we've had in custody for three or four years but have never charged with a crime. What the hell? It may be legal, but it's sure as hell unjust and immoral.
(The usual argument given against letting them have habeas corpus is that they'll "flood the courts with habeas corpus appeals," which is also horseshit -- the same could be said of any accused criminal, and we don't have a problem with that. How does giving them the same rights as any other accused criminal suddenly make things so much worse?)
Oh, yeah, and if we hadn't spent decades interfering in their internal politics, invading their countries for no goddamn reason, and supporting tin pot dictators who oppress their people (do you have any idea how many billions of dollars we happily gave to Saddam in the 80s? Some of it he used to fight Iran, which was why we gave him the money, and some he used to bomb his own people -- which we knew about, and did nothing about), then there wouldn't be any fucking terrorists in the first place.
But no! No, no, you're one of those people who believes that everything was just dandy, we were minding our own business, until one day, "islamo-fascists" appeared out of nowhere and decided to start attacking us for no reason. Right.
Indeed. UIDs are assigned sequentially as accounts are created, so it's strictly true that the smaller the UID, the older the account. I created my account in... June 1999? By that time/. was already a couple years old (started in September 1997).
Your analogy fails. Hunger is not a "thing", it's a state of being due to insufficient food. Eradicating hunger means providing sufficient food to all people, which, if not feasible, is at least possible. Eradicating all knowledge of how to build nuclear bombs is literally impossible because even if you destroyed all existing knowledge of it, it would still be possible to discover that knowledge again.
That isn't to say that we shouldn't try to control the proliferation of nuclear weapons technology and knowledge... but your analogy still fails.:)
Slashdot Mirror
Wow! You mean instead of three interchangeable TV news sources, we now have six? Why, their opinions must collectively be twice as diverse!
Only, not, because they're all owned by titanic media conglomerates run by incredibly wealthy folks who, quite understandably, tend toward a conservative bent. (Fox is merely the most obvious about it.) There wasn't much difference between ABC, NBC, and CBS to begin with. But no, no, there's no media consolidation, because we have six whole TV networks instead of three. Nevermind that there's lots of other kinds of news media -- radio stations and newspapers, for example -- which have undergone drastic consolidation in the past few decades. No, because there's a couple more sources for TV news, there's no consolidation to worry about!
I would tend to think that the topic was Buddhism if I saw a Buddha icon.
Diebold whines about how the source code to their voting software is secret and copyrighted and blah blah... but you know what? Accurate democratic elections easily outweigh the need of any company providing voting software to keep their software secret. The government ought to be hiring a software company on contract to provide the service of writing voting software, not buying a product from them.
This is assuming, of course, that there's any overall benefit to digital voting in the first place, which there really isn't. Digital elections are a terrible idea -- stick with paper. Oh no! We'll have to wait a few more hours to have complete results! Big fucking deal.
Go back and browse slashdot articles from two, four, six, or even eight years ago. The quality hasn't gotten worse. Or really changed much at all, for that matter (Roland Piquepaille notwithstanding).
Lock ten marketdroids in a room and give them a task to try and create a marketing campaign for something impossible and ridiculous. Like a one-pixel digital camera.
I'm envisioning a sticker on the box that reads "THE ONLY MICRO-MEGAPIXEL CAMERA!"
That, as a matter of fact, is part of unconditional parenting. But you don't *stop* at "...is not ok." Leaving it at that doesn't do any good, because unless he *believes* it's wrong, he's not going to want to refrain from doing it in the future, and unless you help him learn to believe that it's wrong (by helping him understand why it harms people, and how they might feel because of that, for example), he's just going to dismiss it as parental blathering.
Perhaps you should read the book.
Kudos to Slashdot for providing timely reports on new trojans!
You've got a mindset problem. They're children, not criminals. Of course, I'm sure you've got a bunch of research studies ready at hand that support your beliefs. Right?
Well then I'm sure your opinions on the book you haven't read and have only just heard of are quite well-informed.
You know of a faster way to become an atheist? Do tell.
I do. I don't encourage you to do so.
Ha! In point of fact, I have tried to read that book. I couldn't make it more than five pages before I gave up in disgust. I literally lost count of the logical fallacies and instances of wishful thinking.
"Unconditional Parenting," by contrast, is nicely footnoted with references to hundreds of scientific studies that support the author's hypotheses.
Linux... Did you mean " *penguins* "?
Unfortunately, it turns out that punishment is not a particular effective way to get children to stop doing "wrong" things. All it really does is teach them to avoid getting caught; they don't learn that the action itself is wrong, only that they'll get punished if they get caught. There's a fair body of research on this; a good introduction is the book "Unconditional Parenting" by Alfie Kohn.
In your example, the issue is that if Timmy knows what he's doing is considered wrong, then you're not going to get him to stop doing it by punishing him. You'll only get him to do it when he's fairly certain he won't get caught, and he'll lie about it, and learn to lie convincingly enough that he'll be able to get away with it. You need to find out WHY he does it even though he knows he'll get punished for it, and help him work out the underlying issues.
Because they're poor, and uneducated, and ignorant, and quite literally most of them do not understand how reproductive biology works. They know that sex makes babies, but it won't happen to them because they pulled out in time, or used a condom (which, as it turns out, aren't foolproof). Or they misjudged when they're fertile and don't use birth control, or they think birth control is pointless, and they got drunk and had sex anyway, or (specifically the men) think that condoms are for wimps, or etc. etc.
We can go around saying how it's their fault, and why should we help them; or we can realize that helping them will lower the crime rate, the birth rate (especially the rate of unwanted children), improve the economy, and make life better for everyone.
What's with all these rappers who think they're actors?
Porndora?
When will they start tracking people who watch TV shows after downloading them off BitTorrent? I want my viewership counted too!
*snerk*
If you want to spin it the other way, just say that this proves that Bush and the Republicans are incapable of dealing with North Korea, they've let a nuclear madman loose onto the world, etc. :)
What do you mean, "inadvertently"? :)
That's one point. Another point is that if your company, for example, uses an open source application, you can hire someone to fix it instead of having to rely on the company that sells it.
Yet another point is transparency -- being able to know WHAT the software is really doing, instead of having to trust the company that sells it.
Why is OSS commercial software so expensive?
Let me rephrase the question: Why is OSS commercial software so expensive?
Gosh, I can't imagine why. Next, let's tackle the question of why free OSS is so cheap.
Now no more online gambling will occur in the States! The money will instead be spent overseas. Hooray!
Wait, what?
I was talking only about the Islamic extremists who are a byproduct of our meddling in the Middle East. I'm well aware that there are and have been plenty of other types and groups of terrorists throughout history, you cocksucking anonymous fuckbag.
Yeah, see, this is what's called "horseshit," because terrorists are not ultra-powerful supervillains. They don't require any "tools" or laws we didn't already have before September 11th.
And yet somehow, fighting them requires taking away some of my Constitutional rights? Nope, actually, it doesn't help. Not one bit. Suspending habeas corpus? How does that help? We already have them in custody; they're not going anywhere! And besides, they're only suspects, just like anyone else accused of a crime. Innocent until proven guilty, that's our standard of law, and it's not like there's some need to prosecute these guys extra-fast. Once they're in custody, what justifiable reason is there to not give them the same due process anyone else would get? Justice is justice whether it's being applied to a citizen or a foreign national. Let's not forget the guys we've had in custody for three or four years but have never charged with a crime. What the hell? It may be legal, but it's sure as hell unjust and immoral.
(The usual argument given against letting them have habeas corpus is that they'll "flood the courts with habeas corpus appeals," which is also horseshit -- the same could be said of any accused criminal, and we don't have a problem with that. How does giving them the same rights as any other accused criminal suddenly make things so much worse?)
Oh, yeah, and if we hadn't spent decades interfering in their internal politics, invading their countries for no goddamn reason, and supporting tin pot dictators who oppress their people (do you have any idea how many billions of dollars we happily gave to Saddam in the 80s? Some of it he used to fight Iran, which was why we gave him the money, and some he used to bomb his own people -- which we knew about, and did nothing about), then there wouldn't be any fucking terrorists in the first place.
But no! No, no, you're one of those people who believes that everything was just dandy, we were minding our own business, until one day, "islamo-fascists" appeared out of nowhere and decided to start attacking us for no reason. Right.
That statistic is quoted incorrectly 82.1% of the time!
BOW DOWN! *snicker*
:)
Lower UIDs don't have any actual powers or anything, so don't feel like you can't tell us we're idiots or anything
Indeed. UIDs are assigned sequentially as accounts are created, so it's strictly true that the smaller the UID, the older the account. I created my account in... June 1999? By that time /. was already a couple years old (started in September 1997).
Your analogy fails. Hunger is not a "thing", it's a state of being due to insufficient food. Eradicating hunger means providing sufficient food to all people, which, if not feasible, is at least possible. Eradicating all knowledge of how to build nuclear bombs is literally impossible because even if you destroyed all existing knowledge of it, it would still be possible to discover that knowledge again.
:)
That isn't to say that we shouldn't try to control the proliferation of nuclear weapons technology and knowledge... but your analogy still fails.