Bare in mind that some of these people have only been using the web for the last 4-5 years. These would be the same people who upgrade their OS every 4-5 years. Shouldn't they toss a new Internet into the cart as well?
In all seriousness though, I think web 2.0 is just a way to make the internet sound exciting again. It has become too difficult to fleece investors with "online" applications. "Web 2.0" applications, on the other hand...
Our minds can wander just as much as yours sometimes... just we aren't really allowed to point it out. That and it probably is a bit easier for us to covertly express... I mean, it's not like when we get excited we lift up a flag to let anyone looking at us know that we're excited.
That's a good idea! If you had a little flag (or better yet: How I'm Feeling Flash Cards!) you waved every time we were were getting somewhere it would be really helpful.
He did specifically say "there are A LOT of guys that smelled worse than her", so assuming that means "that they knew of" as opposed to "in theory" then your counter argument really doesn't make any sense.
x and y are male. z is female. If x, y, and z stink but you only make fun of z then that's sexist. If you made fun of x and y but not z, that would also be sexist.
Take "on the beach" out of that and you've hit the nail on the head.
They made it legal for women to go topless in Ottawa a while back. Of course most women don't WANT to go topless, so you didn't see some sudden surge of breasts on the street, but there was one group who took advantage of the change: Prostitutes...
What did the city do? They made it illegal for prostitutes to go topless (while working). It's sad that they take one small step in the direction of actual fairness (i.e. equality, not artificial hiring quotas and such) and they can't even implement that evenly across the board (male prostitutes are still good to go as far as I know). It's also kind of ridiculous to make it illegal to advertise your illegal services in a particular way.
Sorry, but that is just utter bullshit. In the first case the officers got into trouble but why did they get into troube? Simple, they took the easy way out and that was to tazer a 12 year old girl. They thought their actions where justifed. They where not, and that is whole fucking arguement. It's easy to justify non-lethal force.
Umm, that's almost exactly what I was saying. It wasn't justified, he got in trouble. Here's a newsflash, sometimes police use their guns when they shouldn't. The idea behind the taser is that they will turn to it first, and maybe not shoot someone. Is it abused? Absolutely, because human beings are involved. That doesn't mean they shouldn't have them, but it does mean you have to impose limitations and enforce them. Since we can't control them with some sort of implanted chip that makes the decision for them, we have to do that with training. We tell them when they can use them and provide punishment for when they don't.
As for the second case, that is more bullshit. A six year old with a piece of broken glass is no real threat to an adult. The child could have been disarmed in less time than I take to think about it. Any officer that can't handle a six year old with out having to use a weapon doesn't need to be a cop. Not my Option but that is a Fucking Fact.
I'm going to make the wild assumption that you aren't a firefighter/paramedic/cop or otherwise in a position where you have to deal with bleeding individuals. If you come across someone bleeding, no mater if it's a fit 25 year old with needle marks all over his arms or a 6 year old kid, you are trained to assume they have a blood borne disease. If that person is waving a sharp implement covered with their own blood, that represents a serious threat to you. Age or size is irrelevant to the equation.
So, based on training, taking the kid down with a taser was probably the right thing to do. I don't know that for sure, because I don't have that training, but it seems logical based on the training I do have. Either that, or call in someone properly equipped to deal with the issue, which could leave someone else in a more serious situation with fewer backup options.
If you want to discount the training argument (or fearing for your own safety), there's also the possibility you rush the kid and seriously wound him. 6 years old may seem weak and easy to control to you, but kids are surprisingly strong. I have difficulty controlling my daughter if she really struggles (without resorting to excessive force), and she's one and a half and unarmed. It's not a physical strength thing, it's the simple fact it's hard to control someone against their will without actually hurting them. If that someone is high adrenaline and waving a sharp implement in your face it doesn't make matters any easier.
Would I have tasered the kid, probably not. Based on the the limited information on the incident, however, there may have been some justification, and I'm willing to give the officer the benefit of the doubt. It's clearly not "bullshit".
Lack of common sense would be my guess, that or fear. I also expect Miami police have more of a shoot first mentality, which could tie in to the fact their "clientèle" are more likely to do exactly that.
One of those officers got in trouble, the other one had a child threatening him with a piece of broken glass. If you're old enough to brandish a weapon at a cop, you're old enough to get tasered IMNSHO.
Actually, there is a 3rd option. Before I switched to Virgin (which originally was going to cost $5 a month, but I think they've changed their billing slightly) I was paying $13 a month with Rogers for 120 minutes a month (all fees included) because I called them up and said "I don't need a $30 plan, give me a $9 one (to which access fees were added...) or I'm cancelling my contract. They gave me a $9 plan with reduced minutes rather than lose me completely right then and there.
I cancelled my satellite TV (with Bell), they asked why, and I said it wasn't worth the money. They called back a day later and asked if I'd keep the subscription at a 50% discount. Although I still think $20 a month is more than TV access is worth to me, I accepted.
These companies understand take-what-we-can economics. They charge what is slightly less than criminal, and you have to call them on it. That said, I'm deadly serious when I talk with them (i.e. I WILL cancel the service unless...) and in other situations I've chosen nothing over a contract I consider to be overpriced.
Very few people who want to see a movie in the theatre is going to watch a downloaded version at home instead. I'd guess most of those downloads are people either watching it again (because it was good) or feeling it isn't worth seeing in the theatre (because they think it won't be good).
Taking care of rich gullible corporations (or the government for that matter) may be a successful business model, and it's employed by a lot of companies, but I'd still call it "flawed".
I have a relative who is a city cop (in Canada) and he had to be hit with a stun gun and pepper sprayed (not at the same time, and by your partner, then you do the same back to them)
He said the stun gun hurts like hell, but is nothing compared to pepper spray. He said he'd rather be shot than pepper sprayed.
They don't actually taser cops (i.e. REAL ranged taser, not the stun guns the media refers to as taser) because that's pretty harmful to the body and requires a visit to the hospital. Actually, that's one of the reasons they generally don't taser criminals if they don't have to, it involves a lot of paperwork and the extra hassle of having to bring them to the hospital.
And yet it often involves nobody getting hurt. Yeah, some people feel violated, but probably not on the scale bilking thousands of people out of their life savings.
The real reason you want to punish the white collar crimes more is because IT WILL ACTUALLY WORK. You can't threaten some gun toting thug with a death sentence, his life probably isn't worth that much to him anyway. If every executive that bilked his company and shareholders for a lot of money was hung from a gallows on Wallstreet, you'd see that kind of crime pretty much cease to exist.
Every time I buy a CDR (in Canada), some of that money goes to the music industry. Just because I use the CDR to back up files doesn't mean they don't deserve that money.
I wrote a letter when they were talking about the levy, saying they can't punish every user of CDR media for piracy. The response was that it was to cover the "fair use" backup copy we are allowed to make. I suggested they add that cost into the price of the music CD, but apparently that didn't make any sense...
I've played games for at least 24 hours before my first bathroom break, and I can easily go without food for a couple days (games or not, I just forget to eat sometimes). Water is a tricky issue though. After 24 hours, you really should start drinking again (and maybe think about going to sleep). I think you can only survive for a couple days before dehydration starts to really affect your system.
I went for about 5 days without sleep while I was in High School (note: not a good idea to drive at this point...) without coffee, pop, etc. I had a friend go for a full week using "alertness" pills...
I really don't think either of us were close to death, although in our cases we were still eating proper meals, getting a limited amount of exercise, etc. We were also both in pretty good shape. Obviously I don't know all the details, but just playing a game for 3 days really shouldn't be enough to kill someone unless they aren't eating or are only eating nutrition free garbage...
My first year Chemistry prof had PowerPoint notes we could download. I was the only one with a laptop (donated by work) and I used to type notes into the margins with some success. I eventually found it easier to just print the notes and write in the margins. I imagine a tablet PC would be useful as a kind of hybrid, although I wouldn't get a laptop with a <15" display and UXGA resolution, and I don't think the tablet PCs come with those specs...
That was over 10 years ago now, I imagine things have changed a bit since then...
I don't trust Window's hardware/driver updates. I accepted a NIC patch quite a few years back, and it immediately stopped working (and continued to do so, not matter what I tried). I also had a driver update break a sound card that required a very lengthy cleansing of my system and re-installation of the drivers I had on CD before it worked again.
Now, I only get my driver updates from the hardware manufacturer...
I find the increase in experience is not as useful as most people claim. Maybe I haven't had the right experiences in the last 15 years, but I find the world is more or less exactly as I understood it when I was 16. Sure, some of my idealism died, I'm a better programmer, more responsible, and maybe a little better in bed, but the change really isn't as significant as people "older and wiser" told me it would be at the time.
It may be overstated, but it's still true. Your personality changes as you age. On the big 5 scale, Openness to Experience tends to go down as age goes up. In a way, that's the same thing they are talking about in this study. Finding that liberals are more open to experience than conservatives isn't unexpected, and there is a correlation with some cognitive tests. Assuming people who strongly identify with the Democrats are more likely to be liberal (and vice versa for Republicans) then this finding isn't really unexpected.
Personally, I think openness goes down with age not only because of decreased mental ability/flexibility but because it's simply easier to make decisions based on experience than to analyze all the options and little details. As someone said before, there are situations where this can save considerable time and energy, but there are other situations where it can lead to very bad decision making.
As perhaps a relevant current example, the decision to go to war should probably be made by someone with a very open mind. Actually executing that war is generally better left to someone with a lot of experience and the ability to make big decisions quickly with limited information. It's one of the reasons having a war going on is more likely to bring a conservative government into power (or keep them there) because people want that kind of person running the country in a time of war. Unfortunately, the political systems in place in most countries don't take into account issues like this...
Why are patent cases always filed in Texas? Is it just because everyone is headquartered there, or do they have more pro-patent laws than other states?
I'm assuming you've also read the old testament? It doesn't really embrace your turn the other cheek philosophy I learned in Sunday school either.
It's a small minority of Muslims giving the religion a bad name, just as it's a small minority of Christians, etc. Hating an entire group for the actions of a few is ridiculous, but there are a lot of people who can't make that distinction. That's where backlash against a group like this comes from. It's easy to hate Muslims right now, people think they have all sorts of good reasons, but it's no more intelligent or justified for us to hate them than it is for them to hate us.
I think people who subscribe to any kind of religion are a little loopy, but I don't hate them. I hate the fact that some people feel it necessary to force their belief systems on others, to kill those who think differently, but if I hated the groups those individuals belonged to I'd hate pretty much everyone on earth.
So, is it right to ban a group for people with a common hatred? I don't know. Would it be okay to censor an "I hate Jews" group now? How about in 1941? What about "I hate Arabs" or I hate "White people"? Are those equally valid or invalid groups? I honestly don't know the answer to this question, but I really don't think it's as black and white as we all want it to be.
I'm sure someone is going to point out that this is "Fuck Islam" not "Fuck Muslims". Personally, I doubt there's much difference between the people those two groups would attract or the discussions that would go on inside, so it might as well be "Fuck Muslims".
I'm sure there are a number of people here who think they could do things better if they were in charge. And, lets face it, none of us are going to be winning any elections...
Slashdot Mirror
Bear in mind...
Bare in mind that some of these people have only been using the web for the last 4-5 years. These would be the same people who upgrade their OS every 4-5 years. Shouldn't they toss a new Internet into the cart as well?
In all seriousness though, I think web 2.0 is just a way to make the internet sound exciting again. It has become too difficult to fleece investors with "online" applications. "Web 2.0" applications, on the other hand...
That's a good idea! If you had a little flag (or better yet: How I'm Feeling Flash Cards!) you waved every time we were were getting somewhere it would be really helpful.
He did specifically say "there are A LOT of guys that smelled worse than her", so assuming that means "that they knew of" as opposed to "in theory" then your counter argument really doesn't make any sense.
x and y are male. z is female. If x, y, and z stink but you only make fun of z then that's sexist. If you made fun of x and y but not z, that would also be sexist.
Take "on the beach" out of that and you've hit the nail on the head.
They made it legal for women to go topless in Ottawa a while back. Of course most women don't WANT to go topless, so you didn't see some sudden surge of breasts on the street, but there was one group who took advantage of the change: Prostitutes...
What did the city do? They made it illegal for prostitutes to go topless (while working). It's sad that they take one small step in the direction of actual fairness (i.e. equality, not artificial hiring quotas and such) and they can't even implement that evenly across the board (male prostitutes are still good to go as far as I know). It's also kind of ridiculous to make it illegal to advertise your illegal services in a particular way.
Ummm, when I said "think of the children" there I was actually referring to...
Never mind.
That's a good point. We need to think of the children first, reality or logic be damned.
Sorry, but that is just utter bullshit. In the first case the officers got into trouble but why did they get into troube? Simple, they took the easy way out and that was to tazer a 12 year old girl. They thought their actions where justifed. They where not, and that is whole fucking arguement. It's easy to justify non-lethal force.
Umm, that's almost exactly what I was saying. It wasn't justified, he got in trouble. Here's a newsflash, sometimes police use their guns when they shouldn't. The idea behind the taser is that they will turn to it first, and maybe not shoot someone. Is it abused? Absolutely, because human beings are involved. That doesn't mean they shouldn't have them, but it does mean you have to impose limitations and enforce them. Since we can't control them with some sort of implanted chip that makes the decision for them, we have to do that with training. We tell them when they can use them and provide punishment for when they don't.
As for the second case, that is more bullshit. A six year old with a piece of broken glass is no real threat to an adult. The child could have been disarmed in less time than I take to think about it. Any officer that can't handle a six year old with out having to use a weapon doesn't need to be a cop. Not my Option but that is a Fucking Fact.
I'm going to make the wild assumption that you aren't a firefighter/paramedic/cop or otherwise in a position where you have to deal with bleeding individuals. If you come across someone bleeding, no mater if it's a fit 25 year old with needle marks all over his arms or a 6 year old kid, you are trained to assume they have a blood borne disease. If that person is waving a sharp implement covered with their own blood, that represents a serious threat to you. Age or size is irrelevant to the equation.
So, based on training, taking the kid down with a taser was probably the right thing to do. I don't know that for sure, because I don't have that training, but it seems logical based on the training I do have. Either that, or call in someone properly equipped to deal with the issue, which could leave someone else in a more serious situation with fewer backup options.
If you want to discount the training argument (or fearing for your own safety), there's also the possibility you rush the kid and seriously wound him. 6 years old may seem weak and easy to control to you, but kids are surprisingly strong. I have difficulty controlling my daughter if she really struggles (without resorting to excessive force), and she's one and a half and unarmed. It's not a physical strength thing, it's the simple fact it's hard to control someone against their will without actually hurting them. If that someone is high adrenaline and waving a sharp implement in your face it doesn't make matters any easier.
Would I have tasered the kid, probably not. Based on the the limited information on the incident, however, there may have been some justification, and I'm willing to give the officer the benefit of the doubt. It's clearly not "bullshit".
Lack of common sense would be my guess, that or fear. I also expect Miami police have more of a shoot first mentality, which could tie in to the fact their "clientèle" are more likely to do exactly that.
One of those officers got in trouble, the other one had a child threatening him with a piece of broken glass. If you're old enough to brandish a weapon at a cop, you're old enough to get tasered IMNSHO.
Actually, there is a 3rd option. Before I switched to Virgin (which originally was going to cost $5 a month, but I think they've changed their billing slightly) I was paying $13 a month with Rogers for 120 minutes a month (all fees included) because I called them up and said "I don't need a $30 plan, give me a $9 one (to which access fees were added...) or I'm cancelling my contract. They gave me a $9 plan with reduced minutes rather than lose me completely right then and there.
I cancelled my satellite TV (with Bell), they asked why, and I said it wasn't worth the money. They called back a day later and asked if I'd keep the subscription at a 50% discount. Although I still think $20 a month is more than TV access is worth to me, I accepted.
These companies understand take-what-we-can economics. They charge what is slightly less than criminal, and you have to call them on it. That said, I'm deadly serious when I talk with them (i.e. I WILL cancel the service unless...) and in other situations I've chosen nothing over a contract I consider to be overpriced.
Very few people who want to see a movie in the theatre is going to watch a downloaded version at home instead. I'd guess most of those downloads are people either watching it again (because it was good) or feeling it isn't worth seeing in the theatre (because they think it won't be good).
Taking care of rich gullible corporations (or the government for that matter) may be a successful business model, and it's employed by a lot of companies, but I'd still call it "flawed".
I have a relative who is a city cop (in Canada) and he had to be hit with a stun gun and pepper sprayed (not at the same time, and by your partner, then you do the same back to them)
He said the stun gun hurts like hell, but is nothing compared to pepper spray. He said he'd rather be shot than pepper sprayed.
They don't actually taser cops (i.e. REAL ranged taser, not the stun guns the media refers to as taser) because that's pretty harmful to the body and requires a visit to the hospital. Actually, that's one of the reasons they generally don't taser criminals if they don't have to, it involves a lot of paperwork and the extra hassle of having to bring them to the hospital.
And yet it often involves nobody getting hurt. Yeah, some people feel violated, but probably not on the scale bilking thousands of people out of their life savings.
The real reason you want to punish the white collar crimes more is because IT WILL ACTUALLY WORK. You can't threaten some gun toting thug with a death sentence, his life probably isn't worth that much to him anyway. If every executive that bilked his company and shareholders for a lot of money was hung from a gallows on Wallstreet, you'd see that kind of crime pretty much cease to exist.
Every time I buy a CDR (in Canada), some of that money goes to the music industry. Just because I use the CDR to back up files doesn't mean they don't deserve that money.
I wrote a letter when they were talking about the levy, saying they can't punish every user of CDR media for piracy. The response was that it was to cover the "fair use" backup copy we are allowed to make. I suggested they add that cost into the price of the music CD, but apparently that didn't make any sense...
I've played games for at least 24 hours before my first bathroom break, and I can easily go without food for a couple days (games or not, I just forget to eat sometimes). Water is a tricky issue though. After 24 hours, you really should start drinking again (and maybe think about going to sleep). I think you can only survive for a couple days before dehydration starts to really affect your system.
I went for about 5 days without sleep while I was in High School (note: not a good idea to drive at this point...) without coffee, pop, etc. I had a friend go for a full week using "alertness" pills...
I really don't think either of us were close to death, although in our cases we were still eating proper meals, getting a limited amount of exercise, etc. We were also both in pretty good shape. Obviously I don't know all the details, but just playing a game for 3 days really shouldn't be enough to kill someone unless they aren't eating or are only eating nutrition free garbage...
My first year Chemistry prof had PowerPoint notes we could download. I was the only one with a laptop (donated by work) and I used to type notes into the margins with some success. I eventually found it easier to just print the notes and write in the margins. I imagine a tablet PC would be useful as a kind of hybrid, although I wouldn't get a laptop with a <15" display and UXGA resolution, and I don't think the tablet PCs come with those specs...
That was over 10 years ago now, I imagine things have changed a bit since then...
I don't trust Window's hardware/driver updates. I accepted a NIC patch quite a few years back, and it immediately stopped working (and continued to do so, not matter what I tried). I also had a driver update break a sound card that required a very lengthy cleansing of my system and re-installation of the drivers I had on CD before it worked again.
Now, I only get my driver updates from the hardware manufacturer...
I think this issue is probably that:
a) they didn't offer enough
and
b) they offered it to the city, not directly to the guy who can make the decision...
I find the increase in experience is not as useful as most people claim. Maybe I haven't had the right experiences in the last 15 years, but I find the world is more or less exactly as I understood it when I was 16. Sure, some of my idealism died, I'm a better programmer, more responsible, and maybe a little better in bed, but the change really isn't as significant as people "older and wiser" told me it would be at the time.
It may be overstated, but it's still true. Your personality changes as you age. On the big 5 scale, Openness to Experience tends to go down as age goes up. In a way, that's the same thing they are talking about in this study. Finding that liberals are more open to experience than conservatives isn't unexpected, and there is a correlation with some cognitive tests. Assuming people who strongly identify with the Democrats are more likely to be liberal (and vice versa for Republicans) then this finding isn't really unexpected.
Personally, I think openness goes down with age not only because of decreased mental ability/flexibility but because it's simply easier to make decisions based on experience than to analyze all the options and little details. As someone said before, there are situations where this can save considerable time and energy, but there are other situations where it can lead to very bad decision making.
As perhaps a relevant current example, the decision to go to war should probably be made by someone with a very open mind. Actually executing that war is generally better left to someone with a lot of experience and the ability to make big decisions quickly with limited information. It's one of the reasons having a war going on is more likely to bring a conservative government into power (or keep them there) because people want that kind of person running the country in a time of war. Unfortunately, the political systems in place in most countries don't take into account issues like this...
Why are patent cases always filed in Texas? Is it just because everyone is headquartered there, or do they have more pro-patent laws than other states?
Nerd vigilantes don't exactly inspire fear. I guess if they played on a PVP server somewhere...
I'm assuming you've also read the old testament? It doesn't really embrace your turn the other cheek philosophy I learned in Sunday school either.
It's a small minority of Muslims giving the religion a bad name, just as it's a small minority of Christians, etc. Hating an entire group for the actions of a few is ridiculous, but there are a lot of people who can't make that distinction. That's where backlash against a group like this comes from. It's easy to hate Muslims right now, people think they have all sorts of good reasons, but it's no more intelligent or justified for us to hate them than it is for them to hate us.
I think people who subscribe to any kind of religion are a little loopy, but I don't hate them. I hate the fact that some people feel it necessary to force their belief systems on others, to kill those who think differently, but if I hated the groups those individuals belonged to I'd hate pretty much everyone on earth.
So, is it right to ban a group for people with a common hatred? I don't know. Would it be okay to censor an "I hate Jews" group now? How about in 1941? What about "I hate Arabs" or I hate "White people"? Are those equally valid or invalid groups? I honestly don't know the answer to this question, but I really don't think it's as black and white as we all want it to be.
I'm sure someone is going to point out that this is "Fuck Islam" not "Fuck Muslims". Personally, I doubt there's much difference between the people those two groups would attract or the discussions that would go on inside, so it might as well be "Fuck Muslims".
Umm... Honest?
I'm sure there are a number of people here who think they could do things better if they were in charge. And, lets face it, none of us are going to be winning any elections...
Seriously, all people want a say in how society is run. If you don't believe me, ask people. Travel and ask people. You'll be pleasantly surprised.
That doesn't mean they support democracy. Sure, I want a say. That doesn't mean I want everyone else to have a say as well...