"Perhaps that could have mitigated if the White House had accepted the offer of skimming skips from the Dutch?"
1. The EPA blocked the ships, not Obama. 2. They fixed that and the foreign skimmer ships have actually been operating for months now. (Go look it up from somewhere other than fox news)
Also, don't give me any bullshit about "Obama could have signed an executive order and overrode the EPA". Yes, Obama could have violated numerous checks and balances and completely overstepped his authority but you clearly don't want that either because you seem to think that he's already doing that with the healthcare thing. Pick one. Should Obama overstep his authority or deal with the inherent slow progress of bureaucracy? I'm sick of you assholes that hold the president to a double-standard. No, I don't believe that he's the second coming of Jesus, hell, I don't even like half of the shit he's done; but you're simply arguing against everything he does even if your arguments conflict with each other. You don't judge him based on your opinion of what he should be doing, you immediately conclude that he's wrong and then make up whatever bullshit you can think of to justify it even if ten seconds ago you argued just the opposite.
You're correct, I'm sorry I voted for Obama, I will immediately file a petition to re-instate GWB... OH WAIT! He already served two terms and couldn't serve any more even if everyone in the USA wanted him to. Comparing the current administration to the previous one is complete bullshit because the previous administration WASN'T EVER AN OPTION.
The choice was between Obama and McCain, not Obama and GWB. So, this is bought to you by the people that thought that this administration would be better than the McCain administration. And you know what, they were right. If it were up to McCain these iris scanners would have been implemented months after he took office and you wouldn't have half of the rights you do now.
College students living in a house with ~5 people. $350/month five ways comes to $70 per month per person, which, depending on your situation, isn't incredibly bad. Put in a couple extra hours of work per month and you're done.
That's because comcast can give you really great deals when their customer service budget is ~$0 and they provide somewhere around 40% of the service that you pay for.
By definition, yes, classified information is censorship. However, keeping nuclear bomb designs secret is censorship in much the same way that a 16 year old kid with a girlfriend is a pedophile. Technically, preventing the release of ANY information is censorship.
However, in this context we are OBVIOUSLY using the unofficial definition of censorship which is to prevent the release of information which cannot be justifiably concealed. You're making a bullshit semantic argument that adds nothing to the conversation. Go away.
It is censorship because they're spending TAX money to buy books for the sole purpose of keeping them from citizens. That's the definition of censorship. It's just that rather than outright attempting to ban the book, which would create a hell of an uproar and not end well for the government, they've decided to do the exact same thing but in a way that looks more innocent.
Yes, one of these products is necessary and the other is not. However, you haven't demonstrated how the ECONOMICS of the situation are different in any way whatsoever. Your argument is a red herring.
The argument is that scalpers monopolize the ticket supply, which is like oil sheiks selling the oil at inflated prices. Your response is that because one product is necessary and the other isn't the entire comparison is absolutely insane.
So, I'll start the argument again. I assert that ticket scalpers monopolize (a significant portion of) the ticket supply. This is unfair to consumers who are now forced to pay inflated prices for tickets that the manufacturer (performer, artist, musician, whatever) originally sold. Now, because musicians/artists/etc. provide services that are largely advertised through word of mouth (i.e. your friend tells you about this great new album) I also assert that keeping ticket prices at the original level determined by the artist is vital for the success of the artist. Selling out a concert generates revenue from ticket sales and through future word of mouth advertising. Scalpers raise the price of the tickets and thus reduce the number of people willing to buy the tickets. This harms the future revenue potential of the artist. Thus, scalpers are unfair to consumers and harmful to content producers.
Please, when responding to my argument don't go off on some stupid ass tangent about necessary products.
In the free market the seller could say "I will sell only to those willing to pay with methods X,Y,Z, but I will NOT accept payment through paypal" Thus, any buyers that want to use paypal would be out of luck. Free market, they'll take their money elsewhere.
Ebay says "it doesn't matter what other payments you accept, if you sell anything then you MUST accept paypal if the buyer wants to use it". Thus, Ebay itself is not a free market, because it puts restrictions on which payments users are REQUIRED to accept.
That's just the thing, paypal isn't a bank. Because they're not a bank, they're not subject to any kind of banking regulation. Anyone who uses paypal for ANYTHING is a moron.
If you're a business: get a merchant account to accept credit cards. If you're a regular person: pay with a credit card or check, refuse to use paypal.
The argument "well, I can't use ebay" is bullshit. DON'T FUCKING USE EBAY. If you refuse to use ebay, they will change their policies. This "They fucked me, but I keep using them" is literally the dumbest thing I've ever heard in my life.
"If you ask the lunch lady for mac and cheese, and no chicken thank you, she's not legally bound to respect your privacy."
Then explain laws against stalking. Following someone around in PUBLIC continuously is illegal. These two ideas aren't comparable, that you have no right to privacy in public and that you aren't allowed to follow people in public.
No, all allegations are not automatically baseless, but the government clearly has a large bias against him here and they've previously tried questionable methods to get him to stop what he's doing. Fabricating crimes isn't very far fetched when you start looking at what the US has ALREADY DONE in other situations. I mean, we tried to use a beard destroying cream on Castro for fuck's sake. It doesn't get much more crazy than that. In comparison, fabricating an accusation of rape is actually pretty well thought out. It's a crime that everyone will immediately assume he's guilty of and urge him to step down without the benefit of a trial.
"Or, conversely, name a single college course that teaches you how to design satellite parts without any knowledge beyond 12th grade and I'll eat MY fucking hat"
A single college course? There aren't any. You can't learn this shit in a semester. But I can name several colleges that will teach you over a period of roughly 4 years. MIT, cal tech, Colorado School of Mines, CU Boulder, Rose Hulman. Should I go on?
"Given that most students only show up to school to get a degree to fill a job requirement line item, and will neither use the knowledge they allegedly collected nor attempt to apply it"
What are you basing this on? Let's say you want to be a mechanical engineer. Let's say I design a part for a satellite that's being launched next year. How do you determine whether or not a design I give you will withstand the forces of a launch? What do I use to damp the high frequency vibrations that the optics package won't tolerate during launch?
These are very real problems that thousands of engineers are actually working on every day. This isn't some stupid thought problem that no one has to deal with. To solve the problem you need to know calculus, mechanics of materials, statics, physics, etc. Where do they teach this info on-the-job? Name a single company that teaches you how to design satellite parts without any knowledge beyond 12th grade and I'll eat my fucking hat.
People like you assume that every single degree is worthless. Your child, or yourself, got a degree in business, or art, or history, found that no one would pay you thousands of dollars to sit around on your ass critiquing other people's work and came to the nonsense conclusion that EVERY degree is worthless. I mean, your art degree doesn't let you do anything useful, how could an engineering degree be any different? You passed all of your classes by skipping lectures and showing up drunk or stoned to every test, how could an engineering degree be any more difficult to obtain? You fucked the teacher to pass a class, how could a real college be any different?
Seriously, you need to fucking think for a little bit before deciding that "EVERY DEGREE IS WORTHLESS AND COLLEGE IS AN ENTIRELY BROKEN SYSTEM". I don't think that college is flawless and I DO actually think that there's a huge push for everyone to obtain college degrees regardless of whether or not they need them. However, you cannot assume that because there's a small set of people that have worthless degrees that no one has a real one.
"Why oh why did I have to go to school somewhere they didn't inflate grades?"
Are you fucking insane? No college would ever give out lots of 4.0s. The reason for this is that the more students they fail, the better they look. People assume that failing means that the college is too hard for you and not a result of a curve that FORCES a certain percentage of failures. Any college that inflates its grades would be laughed out of a position of legitimacy in a matter of days. I'd be surprised if more than a larger than average number of people graduated from harvard with 4.0s.
Unless you can back up your assertions with actual statistics, I'm calling bullshit.
"the only impediment to attending Harvard is their academic performance. "
Not true. Most colleges deny shitloads of fully qualified applicants because they simply don't have enough room. This isn't an accident, this is intentional. The more students that a school rejects, the better they are. A huge impediment to attending harvard is the fact that they need to be seen as "selective" in order for their diplomas to be given way more weight than they deserve.
"The problem with PowerPoint is that it makes it so easy to make a bad presentation"
And a nail gun makes it too easy to build a bad house. Seriously man, you're blaming the tools for the quality of the work that people use them to create.
Yes, most people make shitty power point presentations. Yes, most power point presentations are complete shit. There's a lot of poor construction too, but I don't see anyone blaming the hammer or the nail.
They have been studying this since 2007 and now, three years later, have only managed to take 20 of the 30 control servers offline. Good work, to be sure, but it's not even a dent in terms of amount of malware stopped. How many other worms/viruses have been created in the past three years that are still running? And how much work would it take to bring Pushdo back to full force? Put some other C&C servers online and push out an updated list through the current C&C servers.
The only reason this was got crippled was because it was the focus of a particular bit of research. There's no way in hell that the same amount of effort could possibly be put towards stopping even a majority of other, equally dangerous, malware.
I could see tipping that much if the server did EVERYTHING on that list, but tipping $0.25 just for not bringing napkins? I mean, meal late isn't even something that you should reflect in the tip, that's the kitchen's fault and they don't get a share of the tips.
Server being drunk/stoned is certainly something that should result in a poor tip (having to ask more than once for the bill as well), but most of your problems are just excuses for not tipping.
Not necessarily. It's not hypocritical to expect people to not act like jerks. Sure, personal users not contributing back to the project is one thing. But a huge company like microsoft refusing to help out something that makes them money is a dick move.
"Powerpoint also ASSUMES your audience is stupid."
No, god damnit, it doesn't. Power point is a tool designed to be used in presentations. It is NOT AND HAS NEVER BEEN a substitute for presentations. You're SUPPOSED to put your points in bullets because you're there giving the presentation to elaborate upon said bullet points. The audience is not "too stupid" to grasp what you're talking about. However, if you put three paragraphs of text on one slide and talk at the same time then the audience has to decide whether to listen to you or read your slides.
The notes field is there so that you can distribute the presentation to people who weren't there, or to save your audience the time and work of writing down their own notes. This gives you the ability to add information relevant to your presentation that should not be directly discussed. For example, you might simply put an equation and its solution on a slide. You can show your work in the notes for anyone who wants to check this. It also prevents different people from copying down incorrect things. (i.e. your slide says "3.14159" and someone writes down "314159" by mistake.)
If you have found that your audience is "too stupid" to understand your presentations when you read directly off of the slides then the problem is with you, no one else. Not the audience, and most certainly not the tool. Seriously, bitching that power point results in bad presentations is like complaining that a hammer results in injuries when you smack yourself in the head. Power point is absurdly easy to use, the only reason presentations are bad is because people don't take the time to make good ones, and anyone who calls them on this gets the same treatment of the colonel mentioned in the article. Anyone who criticizes bad presentations gets the axe, and people continue to make bad presentations.
Microsoft surface being used for search and rescue. Doesn't the EULA specifically state "not to be used for life saving operations or operations in which failure of the system could result in bodily injury"? A search and rescue robot certainly qualifies as a life saving device, the failure of which could result in people being dropped or crushed.
I wonder why the researchers that made this felt that disregarding the EULA was acceptable.
That line is no longer present in the submission. There is, however, now a banner explaining that the article needs more verification.
I don't know how this nonsense made it past the editors. I don't care how dubious any of them are, you have to be drunk to publish a nonsense submission that uses unsourced wikipedia edits as its references.
Slashdot Mirror
"Perhaps that could have mitigated if the White House had accepted the offer of skimming skips from the Dutch?"
1. The EPA blocked the ships, not Obama.
2. They fixed that and the foreign skimmer ships have actually been operating for months now. (Go look it up from somewhere other than fox news)
Also, don't give me any bullshit about "Obama could have signed an executive order and overrode the EPA". Yes, Obama could have violated numerous checks and balances and completely overstepped his authority but you clearly don't want that either because you seem to think that he's already doing that with the healthcare thing. Pick one. Should Obama overstep his authority or deal with the inherent slow progress of bureaucracy? I'm sick of you assholes that hold the president to a double-standard. No, I don't believe that he's the second coming of Jesus, hell, I don't even like half of the shit he's done; but you're simply arguing against everything he does even if your arguments conflict with each other. You don't judge him based on your opinion of what he should be doing, you immediately conclude that he's wrong and then make up whatever bullshit you can think of to justify it even if ten seconds ago you argued just the opposite.
You're correct, I'm sorry I voted for Obama, I will immediately file a petition to re-instate GWB... OH WAIT! He already served two terms and couldn't serve any more even if everyone in the USA wanted him to. Comparing the current administration to the previous one is complete bullshit because the previous administration WASN'T EVER AN OPTION.
The choice was between Obama and McCain, not Obama and GWB. So, this is bought to you by the people that thought that this administration would be better than the McCain administration. And you know what, they were right. If it were up to McCain these iris scanners would have been implemented months after he took office and you wouldn't have half of the rights you do now.
College students living in a house with ~5 people. $350/month five ways comes to $70 per month per person, which, depending on your situation, isn't incredibly bad. Put in a couple extra hours of work per month and you're done.
That's because comcast can give you really great deals when their customer service budget is ~$0 and they provide somewhere around 40% of the service that you pay for.
By definition, yes, classified information is censorship. However, keeping nuclear bomb designs secret is censorship in much the same way that a 16 year old kid with a girlfriend is a pedophile. Technically, preventing the release of ANY information is censorship.
However, in this context we are OBVIOUSLY using the unofficial definition of censorship which is to prevent the release of information which cannot be justifiably concealed.
You're making a bullshit semantic argument that adds nothing to the conversation. Go away.
It is censorship because they're spending TAX money to buy books for the sole purpose of keeping them from citizens. That's the definition of censorship. It's just that rather than outright attempting to ban the book, which would create a hell of an uproar and not end well for the government, they've decided to do the exact same thing but in a way that looks more innocent.
Yes, one of these products is necessary and the other is not. However, you haven't demonstrated how the ECONOMICS of the situation are different in any way whatsoever. Your argument is a red herring.
The argument is that scalpers monopolize the ticket supply, which is like oil sheiks selling the oil at inflated prices. Your response is that because one product is necessary and the other isn't the entire comparison is absolutely insane.
So, I'll start the argument again. I assert that ticket scalpers monopolize (a significant portion of) the ticket supply. This is unfair to consumers who are now forced to pay inflated prices for tickets that the manufacturer (performer, artist, musician, whatever) originally sold. Now, because musicians/artists/etc. provide services that are largely advertised through word of mouth (i.e. your friend tells you about this great new album) I also assert that keeping ticket prices at the original level determined by the artist is vital for the success of the artist. Selling out a concert generates revenue from ticket sales and through future word of mouth advertising. Scalpers raise the price of the tickets and thus reduce the number of people willing to buy the tickets. This harms the future revenue potential of the artist. Thus, scalpers are unfair to consumers and harmful to content producers.
Please, when responding to my argument don't go off on some stupid ass tangent about necessary products.
No, moron, we're not.
In the free market the seller could say "I will sell only to those willing to pay with methods X,Y,Z, but I will NOT accept payment through paypal"
Thus, any buyers that want to use paypal would be out of luck. Free market, they'll take their money elsewhere.
Ebay says "it doesn't matter what other payments you accept, if you sell anything then you MUST accept paypal if the buyer wants to use it". Thus, Ebay itself is not a free market, because it puts restrictions on which payments users are REQUIRED to accept.
That's just the thing, paypal isn't a bank. Because they're not a bank, they're not subject to any kind of banking regulation. Anyone who uses paypal for ANYTHING is a moron.
If you're a business: get a merchant account to accept credit cards. If you're a regular person: pay with a credit card or check, refuse to use paypal.
The argument "well, I can't use ebay" is bullshit. DON'T FUCKING USE EBAY. If you refuse to use ebay, they will change their policies. This "They fucked me, but I keep using them" is literally the dumbest thing I've ever heard in my life.
"If you ask the lunch lady for mac and cheese, and no chicken thank you, she's not legally bound to respect your privacy."
Then explain laws against stalking. Following someone around in PUBLIC continuously is illegal. These two ideas aren't comparable, that you have no right to privacy in public and that you aren't allowed to follow people in public.
Duh, your personal identification number number is so that you can get money from the automatic teller machine machine.
"He's most likely guilty of something."
Based on what, the fact that the media said he MIGHT be? Why are you so quick to deny this guy a trial? Do you have evidence that we don't?
No, all allegations are not automatically baseless, but the government clearly has a large bias against him here and they've previously tried questionable methods to get him to stop what he's doing. Fabricating crimes isn't very far fetched when you start looking at what the US has ALREADY DONE in other situations. I mean, we tried to use a beard destroying cream on Castro for fuck's sake. It doesn't get much more crazy than that. In comparison, fabricating an accusation of rape is actually pretty well thought out. It's a crime that everyone will immediately assume he's guilty of and urge him to step down without the benefit of a trial.
"Or, conversely, name a single college course that teaches you how to design satellite parts without any knowledge beyond 12th grade and I'll eat MY fucking hat"
A single college course? There aren't any. You can't learn this shit in a semester. But I can name several colleges that will teach you over a period of roughly 4 years. MIT, cal tech, Colorado School of Mines, CU Boulder, Rose Hulman. Should I go on?
"Given that most students only show up to school to get a degree to fill a job requirement line item, and will neither use the knowledge they allegedly collected nor attempt to apply it"
What are you basing this on? Let's say you want to be a mechanical engineer. Let's say I design a part for a satellite that's being launched next year. How do you determine whether or not a design I give you will withstand the forces of a launch? What do I use to damp the high frequency vibrations that the optics package won't tolerate during launch?
These are very real problems that thousands of engineers are actually working on every day. This isn't some stupid thought problem that no one has to deal with. To solve the problem you need to know calculus, mechanics of materials, statics, physics, etc. Where do they teach this info on-the-job? Name a single company that teaches you how to design satellite parts without any knowledge beyond 12th grade and I'll eat my fucking hat.
People like you assume that every single degree is worthless. Your child, or yourself, got a degree in business, or art, or history, found that no one would pay you thousands of dollars to sit around on your ass critiquing other people's work and came to the nonsense conclusion that EVERY degree is worthless. I mean, your art degree doesn't let you do anything useful, how could an engineering degree be any different? You passed all of your classes by skipping lectures and showing up drunk or stoned to every test, how could an engineering degree be any more difficult to obtain? You fucked the teacher to pass a class, how could a real college be any different?
Seriously, you need to fucking think for a little bit before deciding that "EVERY DEGREE IS WORTHLESS AND COLLEGE IS AN ENTIRELY BROKEN SYSTEM". I don't think that college is flawless and I DO actually think that there's a huge push for everyone to obtain college degrees regardless of whether or not they need them. However, you cannot assume that because there's a small set of people that have worthless degrees that no one has a real one.
"Why oh why did I have to go to school somewhere they didn't inflate grades?"
Are you fucking insane? No college would ever give out lots of 4.0s. The reason for this is that the more students they fail, the better they look. People assume that failing means that the college is too hard for you and not a result of a curve that FORCES a certain percentage of failures. Any college that inflates its grades would be laughed out of a position of legitimacy in a matter of days. I'd be surprised if more than a larger than average number of people graduated from harvard with 4.0s.
Unless you can back up your assertions with actual statistics, I'm calling bullshit.
"the only impediment to attending Harvard is their academic performance. "
Not true. Most colleges deny shitloads of fully qualified applicants because they simply don't have enough room. This isn't an accident, this is intentional. The more students that a school rejects, the better they are. A huge impediment to attending harvard is the fact that they need to be seen as "selective" in order for their diplomas to be given way more weight than they deserve.
"The problem with PowerPoint is that it makes it so easy to make a bad presentation"
And a nail gun makes it too easy to build a bad house. Seriously man, you're blaming the tools for the quality of the work that people use them to create.
Yes, most people make shitty power point presentations. Yes, most power point presentations are complete shit. There's a lot of poor construction too, but I don't see anyone blaming the hammer or the nail.
"But PowerPoint does make poor communication easier"
So does the telephone.
They have been studying this since 2007 and now, three years later, have only managed to take 20 of the 30 control servers offline. Good work, to be sure, but it's not even a dent in terms of amount of malware stopped. How many other worms/viruses have been created in the past three years that are still running? And how much work would it take to bring Pushdo back to full force? Put some other C&C servers online and push out an updated list through the current C&C servers.
The only reason this was got crippled was because it was the focus of a particular bit of research. There's no way in hell that the same amount of effort could possibly be put towards stopping even a majority of other, equally dangerous, malware.
A small victory in a huge war.
I could see tipping that much if the server did EVERYTHING on that list, but tipping $0.25 just for not bringing napkins? I mean, meal late isn't even something that you should reflect in the tip, that's the kitchen's fault and they don't get a share of the tips.
Server being drunk/stoned is certainly something that should result in a poor tip (having to ask more than once for the bill as well), but most of your problems are just excuses for not tipping.
Not necessarily. It's not hypocritical to expect people to not act like jerks. Sure, personal users not contributing back to the project is one thing. But a huge company like microsoft refusing to help out something that makes them money is a dick move.
"Powerpoint also ASSUMES your audience is stupid."
No, god damnit, it doesn't. Power point is a tool designed to be used in presentations. It is NOT AND HAS NEVER BEEN a substitute for presentations. You're SUPPOSED to put your points in bullets because you're there giving the presentation to elaborate upon said bullet points. The audience is not "too stupid" to grasp what you're talking about. However, if you put three paragraphs of text on one slide and talk at the same time then the audience has to decide whether to listen to you or read your slides.
The notes field is there so that you can distribute the presentation to people who weren't there, or to save your audience the time and work of writing down their own notes. This gives you the ability to add information relevant to your presentation that should not be directly discussed. For example, you might simply put an equation and its solution on a slide. You can show your work in the notes for anyone who wants to check this. It also prevents different people from copying down incorrect things. (i.e. your slide says "3.14159" and someone writes down "314159" by mistake.)
If you have found that your audience is "too stupid" to understand your presentations when you read directly off of the slides then the problem is with you, no one else. Not the audience, and most certainly not the tool. Seriously, bitching that power point results in bad presentations is like complaining that a hammer results in injuries when you smack yourself in the head. Power point is absurdly easy to use, the only reason presentations are bad is because people don't take the time to make good ones, and anyone who calls them on this gets the same treatment of the colonel mentioned in the article. Anyone who criticizes bad presentations gets the axe, and people continue to make bad presentations.
Microsoft surface being used for search and rescue. Doesn't the EULA specifically state "not to be used for life saving operations or operations in which failure of the system could result in bodily injury"? A search and rescue robot certainly qualifies as a life saving device, the failure of which could result in people being dropped or crushed.
I wonder why the researchers that made this felt that disregarding the EULA was acceptable.
That line is no longer present in the submission. There is, however, now a banner explaining that the article needs more verification.
I don't know how this nonsense made it past the editors. I don't care how dubious any of them are, you have to be drunk to publish a nonsense submission that uses unsourced wikipedia edits as its references.