Oh yes, there's a middle ground. You've probably winged about it a number of times in recent years; I know that I have. What have been the most effective tools for causing politicians to make bad (for us) policy decisions? Lobby groups. Everyone here has heard of the corporate lobbyists who get laws passed that are beneficial to them and detrimental to the general public. Similarly, the special interest lobby groups like the fundamentalist groups that try to force Intelligent Design down our collective throat.
So my question is: Why tell aren't we using these tools? Is there a special rule that you have to meet a certain evil quota before you can form a lobby group? Assuming not, then how would we go about making such a group? The answer seems pretty damn obvious in this day and age: the internet. Might it not, just maybe, be possible to create groups that lobby for certain things (like, say, privacy, or net neutrality), and gather support on the internet so that you can build the voting bloc that you represent into a significant political force?
Maybe I'm just dreaming and people really are so apathetic they can't even be bothered supporting a political ideal. Or maybe, just maybe, there's a lot of people out there disenchanted with the system and giving up, saying "What can I do?", but who would, given a chance, leap at the possibility of really making a difference.
I'm a pessimist by nature, so I personally doubt it would work. But all the same, the possibilities it could open might just make it worth giving a shot. It's gotta be better than giving up, anyway.
Huh. Big opportunity here for independent artists looking to get heard.
Wonder if this'll backfire like...well, just about every other money-grabbing scheme from the RIAA and co.
Re:While we're at it, we should consider investing
on
Water From Wind
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· Score: 1
Besides - people already balk at the idea of having a wind farm near their residence (classic NIMBY reaction). Just 'cuz these 'mills make water instead of electricity doesn't make 'em any less of an eyesore.
In Australia, people just won't care if it produces water, particularly in the southeast. We're currently in the grips of a ten year drought - many, many farmers are completely reliant on government assistance to not go bankrupt and put food on the table, and the suicide rate amoung them is at an all time high. If this could produce enough water to irrigate and/or water livestock, it could destroy the aesthetics of the area completely and they'd still be perfectly happy to have one. Even in the suburbs there would be very little opposition - everyone knows that our water reserves are running ridiculously low, which is leading to such measures becoming common as capturing the water your shower runs through before it heats up sufficiently in a bucket to use on the garden (see here).
People only tend to balk at these things if they have the luxury of doing so, and at this stage it really is a matter of life and death.
Do they have any supporting data, other than hearsay and fear? The only thorough study of the idea that violent video games and violent tendencies are linked that I know of (here) failed to find any such link at all, even when the researchers entered the study expecting to find a link. And this is any link whatsoever, not just whether violent video games cause violent tendencies.
Ooooo, orbital structures. It may not be able to make the solar panels, but this might be able to take a lot of the work out of putting together a Solar Power Satellite, and some day even an orbital colony.
Or planet-based colony, I suppose, for you land-loving heathens.
Re:Do you live in the mountains or something?
on
Giant Ice Shelf Snaps
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· Score: 2, Informative
Even during the winter snow is extremely rare in the lowlands (last time it snowed here in Melbourne - at the southeast corner of the mainland - was last year, but the time before that was a couple of decades ago {source]}). During summer, there's generally no snow anywhere. The snow that fell in the mountains is what is generally associated with the middle of winter (in fact, last winter there was next to no snowfall), so after days of heat (around 100F) that allowed the spread of fires so bad that smoke covered pretty much the entire state, the snow was highly strange (if welcome for the firefighters, as it allowed them to be home for Christmas).
Uh, do we really need a blow-by-blow for this case on here? I mean, this is an interesting decision, but it seems to be more a procedual ruling rather than setting a precedent of any strength. Posted on a legal blog I could understand, but I doubt that enough of Slashdot's readers are fluent enough in legalese to get much sense out of it, or even get particularly interested in an intermediate step like this if they do understand it.
Disclaimer: IANAL, so this is wide open to being contradicted to someone who is actually in the field.
Uh, that's the stated purpose of the question. If the editors are prepared to have this discussion here, so be it - it's their house, so more power to them.
Ah, I seriously doubt that it was the leader of the CSIRO who announced this - if he announced every discovery he wouldn't have any time to do anything else, given that the CSIRO is a massive government-funded dedicated research agency with over 6500 staff. In fact, from the article: "The red colour in apple skin is the result of anthocyanins, the natural plant compounds responsible for blue and red colours in many flowers and fruits," says the leader of the CSIRO Plant Industry research team, Dr Mandy Walker.
Not a big issue, just a little clarification (it just struck me as odd in the summary).
On the other hand, if you could steer it into Earth's orbit you might be able to mine a ridiculous amount of valuable material from it. As someone interested in orbital megastructures, this is one of the big steps. Of course, there's a few more - see if these don't sound like interesting challenges:
Finding some way to extract the ore.
Getting a refinary set up in space.
Creating construction robots that can use the processed materials to build the structure.
That'd make an interesting study - have a group of teenagers asked not to pirate for a period of six months or so, and a control group which maintains normal habits, then analyze how much each group spends on music.
Australia is one of your staunchest allies, shoring up your rear now that you decided to give up on fighting al-quaeda and the taliban so you could concentrate on Iraq instead.
Hehehe, it's funnier than that - we're one of only 2 nations in the world with substantial uranium deposits. It's likely because of the strict safeguards that we've imposed in accordance with the IAEA that there are so few nuclear powers in the world.
But I suppose that yes, were we to desire nuclear weapons, as a developed nation with a hell of a lot of raw material we're likely in one of the best positions to do so. Good thing that people here throw up a stink if even nuclear power plants are proposed (we currently have none).
OK, assuming the worst-case scenario - the elections are stolen - can a class-action lawsuit be started to nullify the election results on the grounds of insecurity and force a re-election with only paper-based voting allowed?
In Australia, there is a government-funded broadcast organisation called the ABC. It's often counted as one of the best sources of real, hard televised news, as opposed to the celeb-crap that is spouted on the commercial networks. The entire organisation is openly left-leaning and thus decidedly anti-government (to both major parties, these days). The government would love to scale back funding for them, but they know there'd be a pretty significant outcry, particularly from older Australians (who provide a fair percentage of the incumbent conservative coalition's votes).
One of the funnier things I heard was from the ABC's youth radio Triple J, where one of the DJs (on this 'government-controlled' station) said (in response to some talk-back stuff) 'Take this as a lesson kids - don't burn down your school. Do something constructive and burn down Parliament House instead.' This is the kind of stuff which seems to be encouraged by the higher-ups at the station, rather than discouraged.
Government radio doesn't necessarily mean that it's controlled by politicians.
The point is that now there is a legitimate company behind it - and most importantly, a legitimate company with a lot of money to lose.
I still don't understand what they were thinking. At this stage, I tend to doubt that the video-ads at the end of the YouTube videos that they've announced will cover the costs that are going to start piling up.
(and even then it took quite a few billion years) Not really. Current estimates place the beginning of life at.5 to 1 billion years after the formation of the Earth; 3.4 - 3.9 billion years ago.
I don't get some people. Do they just randomly moderate posts troll? Do they hate moderating that much? I wouldn't have said that it was really that onerous a responsibility.
Heh, this would be interesting in a large company's corporate gym - set up two dozen of them and have two teams go at it. If you're in a team, you've more reason to keep at it (or you let the rest of the team down), and teammates would be encouraging each other to keep going. Team building and exercise all in one.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh yes, there's a middle ground. You've probably winged about it a number of times in recent years; I know that I have. What have been the most effective tools for causing politicians to make bad (for us) policy decisions? Lobby groups. Everyone here has heard of the corporate lobbyists who get laws passed that are beneficial to them and detrimental to the general public. Similarly, the special interest lobby groups like the fundamentalist groups that try to force Intelligent Design down our collective throat.
So my question is: Why tell aren't we using these tools? Is there a special rule that you have to meet a certain evil quota before you can form a lobby group? Assuming not, then how would we go about making such a group? The answer seems pretty damn obvious in this day and age: the internet. Might it not, just maybe, be possible to create groups that lobby for certain things (like, say, privacy, or net neutrality), and gather support on the internet so that you can build the voting bloc that you represent into a significant political force?
Maybe I'm just dreaming and people really are so apathetic they can't even be bothered supporting a political ideal. Or maybe, just maybe, there's a lot of people out there disenchanted with the system and giving up, saying "What can I do?", but who would, given a chance, leap at the possibility of really making a difference.
I'm a pessimist by nature, so I personally doubt it would work. But all the same, the possibilities it could open might just make it worth giving a shot. It's gotta be better than giving up, anyway.
Screw building. These guys are (nominally) human - they're flying their base to a safer location, as expected.
Huh. Big opportunity here for independent artists looking to get heard. Wonder if this'll backfire like...well, just about every other money-grabbing scheme from the RIAA and co.
Besides - people already balk at the idea of having a wind farm near their residence (classic NIMBY reaction). Just 'cuz these 'mills make water instead of electricity doesn't make 'em any less of an eyesore.
In Australia, people just won't care if it produces water, particularly in the southeast. We're currently in the grips of a ten year drought - many, many farmers are completely reliant on government assistance to not go bankrupt and put food on the table, and the suicide rate amoung them is at an all time high. If this could produce enough water to irrigate and/or water livestock, it could destroy the aesthetics of the area completely and they'd still be perfectly happy to have one. Even in the suburbs there would be very little opposition - everyone knows that our water reserves are running ridiculously low, which is leading to such measures becoming common as capturing the water your shower runs through before it heats up sufficiently in a bucket to use on the garden (see here).
People only tend to balk at these things if they have the luxury of doing so, and at this stage it really is a matter of life and death.
Do they have any supporting data, other than hearsay and fear? The only thorough study of the idea that violent video games and violent tendencies are linked that I know of (here) failed to find any such link at all, even when the researchers entered the study expecting to find a link. And this is any link whatsoever, not just whether violent video games cause violent tendencies.
Ooooo, orbital structures. It may not be able to make the solar panels, but this might be able to take a lot of the work out of putting together a Solar Power Satellite, and some day even an orbital colony. Or planet-based colony, I suppose, for you land-loving heathens.
Even during the winter snow is extremely rare in the lowlands (last time it snowed here in Melbourne - at the southeast corner of the mainland - was last year, but the time before that was a couple of decades ago {source]}). During summer, there's generally no snow anywhere. The snow that fell in the mountains is what is generally associated with the middle of winter (in fact, last winter there was next to no snowfall), so after days of heat (around 100F) that allowed the spread of fires so bad that smoke covered pretty much the entire state, the snow was highly strange (if welcome for the firefighters, as it allowed them to be home for Christmas).
Uh, do we really need a blow-by-blow for this case on here? I mean, this is an interesting decision, but it seems to be more a procedual ruling rather than setting a precedent of any strength. Posted on a legal blog I could understand, but I doubt that enough of Slashdot's readers are fluent enough in legalese to get much sense out of it, or even get particularly interested in an intermediate step like this if they do understand it. Disclaimer: IANAL, so this is wide open to being contradicted to someone who is actually in the field.
Uh, that's the stated purpose of the question. If the editors are prepared to have this discussion here, so be it - it's their house, so more power to them.
Attribution: James Nicoll.
Ah, I seriously doubt that it was the leader of the CSIRO who announced this - if he announced every discovery he wouldn't have any time to do anything else, given that the CSIRO is a massive government-funded dedicated research agency with over 6500 staff. In fact, from the article:
"The red colour in apple skin is the result of anthocyanins, the natural plant compounds responsible for blue and red colours in many flowers and fruits," says the leader of the CSIRO Plant Industry research team, Dr Mandy Walker.
Not a big issue, just a little clarification (it just struck me as odd in the summary).
Should be interesting if/when someone tries this.
That'd make an interesting study - have a group of teenagers asked not to pirate for a period of six months or so, and a control group which maintains normal habits, then analyze how much each group spends on music.
Uh, no. They are saying that they've seen the report, not that they're referencing it in an academic sense, which wouldn't make sense as they're not.
Australia is one of your staunchest allies, shoring up your rear now that you decided to give up on fighting al-quaeda and the taliban so you could concentrate on Iraq instead.
Hehehe, it's funnier than that - we're one of only 2 nations in the world with substantial uranium deposits. It's likely because of the strict safeguards that we've imposed in accordance with the IAEA that there are so few nuclear powers in the world.
But I suppose that yes, were we to desire nuclear weapons, as a developed nation with a hell of a lot of raw material we're likely in one of the best positions to do so. Good thing that people here throw up a stink if even nuclear power plants are proposed (we currently have none).
Hmm, could you possibly list these checks and balances, for other people who may feel the need to take action?
OK, assuming the worst-case scenario - the elections are stolen - can a class-action lawsuit be started to nullify the election results on the grounds of insecurity and force a re-election with only paper-based voting allowed?
Heh.
In Australia, there is a government-funded broadcast organisation called the ABC. It's often counted as one of the best sources of real, hard televised news, as opposed to the celeb-crap that is spouted on the commercial networks. The entire organisation is openly left-leaning and thus decidedly anti-government (to both major parties, these days). The government would love to scale back funding for them, but they know there'd be a pretty significant outcry, particularly from older Australians (who provide a fair percentage of the incumbent conservative coalition's votes).
One of the funnier things I heard was from the ABC's youth radio Triple J, where one of the DJs (on this 'government-controlled' station) said (in response to some talk-back stuff) 'Take this as a lesson kids - don't burn down your school. Do something constructive and burn down Parliament House instead.' This is the kind of stuff which seems to be encouraged by the higher-ups at the station, rather than discouraged.
Government radio doesn't necessarily mean that it's controlled by politicians.
The point is that now there is a legitimate company behind it - and most importantly, a legitimate company with a lot of money to lose.
I still don't understand what they were thinking. At this stage, I tend to doubt that the video-ads at the end of the YouTube videos that they've announced will cover the costs that are going to start piling up.
(and even then it took quite a few billion years) .5 to 1 billion years after the formation of the Earth; 3.4 - 3.9 billion years ago.
Not really. Current estimates place the beginning of life at
Take a read of the Wikipedia article on the history of our planet, it's a fascinating story.
Actually, they created and discovered it, since they had to make it from smaller nuclei before it could be observed.
A million bucks is a million bucks. If they've already got it going, presumably it'd be worth it.
Congrats, you fell into Thompson's trap. Now why don't you have a read of what the game is really about (as linked in an earlier comment).
I don't get some people. Do they just randomly moderate posts troll? Do they hate moderating that much? I wouldn't have said that it was really that onerous a responsibility.
Heh, this would be interesting in a large company's corporate gym - set up two dozen of them and have two teams go at it. If you're in a team, you've more reason to keep at it (or you let the rest of the team down), and teammates would be encouraging each other to keep going. Team building and exercise all in one.