One thing that I have never really understood.... whats so bad about being desensitized?
I mean really, do we think that the proper reaction, in just about any situation, is to immediately reduce yourself to a quivering blob of jelly? Isn't desensitization exactly what you want when a major event happens and you have to keep a calm and level head and act rationally?
I mean seriously, other than a bunch o fhand waving about the bogus dangers of "desensitization" is there really any way at all that this could be, in the least bit, harmful to children?
Seriously, if we had been a bit more "desensitized" to this extremely rare event, by a very small number of people (who are mostly all dead or captured), then maybe we wouldn't have overreacted so badly.
At current count, adding security to cockpit doors is the SINGLE change I have seen since 9/12 thats made anyone any safer. In reality, the attack vector was one that relied on passengers believing they would be involved in a bloodless standoff that was exploited. 9/11 was a 100% self correcting problem, as it educated airline passengers to a new type of terrorist plot.
As of about 11 am on 9/11 the plot could not have been repeated ever again. No new "security measures" were needed. However, being nation of ultra-sensitive cowards who like to hide behind big police forces and military might, we did a lot more than that.
I see desensitization as a good thing. Lets have them color in some suicide bomb belts while they are at it. so maybe next time we can act like mature adults rather than sacred little children.
My own father told me once, with quite a smile on his face, that he once had the opportunity to write a paper.... and submit it to two different classes for credit! Once in history, and once in his english class. A proud achievement for some, and somewhat rare. As someone whose work often involves writting documents; I must applaud the ability to meet two deliverables with one task.
So how would that work today... Prof A gets the paper in first term. His grad-slaves submit the papers as they grade them. Prof B doesn't manage to get the papers to his grad-slaves for a couple of days... they do the same... and now... the student gets marked off for plagerizing himself? How will that work?
Of course the scary part about that is.... well... why so many tor exit nodes in china?
If you control enough exit nodes, some attacks start to become pretty simple, especially given that default tor setups don't really enforce any sort of control over where entry and exit nodes are. A "bad guy" running rogue nodes isn't going to list his node family, so whats to stop your client from picking one of his nodes for entry, and one for exit?
Of course, if you keep a local list of allowed entry nodes, that could help, but... most tor clients are just wide open and at best select nodes that are "registered". All a person would really need is one unique email address per node to register with.
I hope its because there are so many people in china, that there are enough people who care about privacy and run nodes. However, its entirely possible this is also an attack on tor. Though, whose to say the NSA doesn't run half the US nodes?
Yes, as a fair use proponent I agree with the decision. Though, even if it didn't apply as an "unpublished work", I still don't see this as a problematic use, in that I don't see any reasonable expectation of confidentiality. If there was one, certainly not one that would extend to expecting the professor would not store, or otherwise use his paper in accordance with the needs of the professor and institution to fairly dole out credit (including keeping, or causing others to keep, a copy for purposes of checking for plagerism now and in the future).
This "use" is quite "fair". Now, if the professor was posting the papers online himself for others to read.... or selling compendiums of papers etc.... thats another story. However, this sort of use seems quite reasonable, and unreasonable to put restrictions around beyond basic protection of the privacy of the student involved (oooh... now how does this relate to FERPA?... which often does, in some part, apply to students (I used to work in University IT) )
What I find worriesome is the technology itself. Essays are often about similar topics. Papers are seldom about really original topics or even originals slants. Overall, amongst the growing number of similar papers out there, I do wonder how long it will be before their false positive rate starts to climb? Will we begin to see students accused of plagerism for nothing more than not thinking of much new to say, and having a writting style similar to some other unoriginal sod with the same paper topic?
Sure, the chances that someone else will write the same paper you did is pretty small, even with lots and lots of papers. However, what about the chances that any two people in a wide database of student papers will write almost the same paper, given the same topic, and same sources. That question worries me far more as I fear that as time goes on, the chances of this happening approaches 1.
They put out big open relays, then were surprized when people started relaying traffic through them. Does this make anyone else think of SMTP servers? They should be thankful there is a built in self-correcting problem if anyone decided to starty blasting advertising through there. Or better yet.... declare these things open to the damned public and replace them with something that isn't just a wide open relay!
I mean come on... you can only bitch so much if you arn't willing to install access controls that will keep people out. If anyone is capable of this.... its the US Military. Frankly... its in that category of "If you leave your car running with the doors unlocked on a city street, how much sympathy should you expect from me when it gets stolen?" At least all they can do is tie up some bandwidth.... its not like they downed and recovered the satellite and now have it up on blocks by the side of the ocean with all the good parts stripped.
I think the real message to the military here should be "take it as a lesson and cut your losses now". Cuz we can (and will) argue till we are red in the fingers about whether its right or wrong or people should be punished.... what you can't stop you can't stop. A little reality is worth a fuckton of theory. Reality states they are fucked by their own shortsightedness. Just replace this junk and move on.
Maybe a better analogy... if you leave an old dead VW minibus on your lot by the road for a few years... its ugly sure, but so what. Now when a homeless guy moves in...and you have to kick him out... yes... its his bad. However, when its the 5th homeless guy this year... does it really matter whose bad it is?
> I am not sure that security can be evaluated by past performance. "Hasn't cost us much yet" doesn't seem like a good indication of whether it > will continue to cost more in the future. It is, after all, similar to saying that a predator won't do much damage to a prey which doesn't > have natural defenses based on how little damage such a predator has done so far.
Ahh but whats to say we should expect an increase in the future, and not a decrease?
That would require that we know how the number of predators have changed, and their relationship with whatever population we are concerned about.
Its the old "80/20 rule". If we are worried about tiger attacks, we can institute a new protection every time an attack happens.... but do you continue that policy past the point of diminishing returns? What if the next level of "tiger protection" involves everyone smearing themselves in the dung of some animal which we have determined repels tigers? At what point do you say "Oh shit, you mean this is getting too costly to stop the 1 attack a year we still have?"
Take it to air travel... how many flights are hijacked as a percentage of flights flown? Ill give you a hint, its very very small.
> it was to ail a very real problem of people taking literature, translating it and selling it in foreign countries with no revenue going to > the original artist or publisher.
What I find interesting here is that this is roughly the same problem as was described in a post here about child porn. That it... this all originated back in a time when only professionals with some serious bankroll could do this. You used to need a printing press, which was beyond the means of the average person... just like kiddie pornographers used to need large studios and cameras etc.
Now... well... we have 15 year olds going around taking nudie pix for their boyfriend, and suddenly child porn charges are comming out. Oh wait... thats whats happening with other content too!
I think its kind of funny that we started with laws because people with extraordinary means were taking advantage of people with lesser means.. and now we are applying them to a situation that has been turned on its ear by technology.
You are right, but at the same time... unlike many of the other major media outlets, they actually do have a fair amount of what I would consider reasoned discourse. They are not spot on all the time, they still have a fair amount of bullshit from every side. However, its one of the few places I have seen an in depth discussion on any topic that wasn't all sound bites and frothing at the mouth.... look at shows like "on point" or "Talk of the nation" and they really do at least seem to try to avoid being just a superficial sound bite pissing match.
Sure they don't always triumph in that regard, but they seem to me to be the only ones in broadcast media even trying.
Interesting. However, that isn't enough information to determine if thats relevant. Sure, we can build consensus but on what? First we need consensus that there is a problem, then that it actually needs to be solved, then on a solution. Whats to say you wont end up building consensus around a solution that doesn't actually work? What if the consensus is "this doesn't cost us enough to be worth working together, lets go get lunch"?
Your assessment sounds spot on to me... if we make the assumption that "the bank" is a single entity with a single purpose and logically gaurds its own interests.
However, when we put people into the equation, we have a bank as a collection of actors, whose job it is to act in the best interest. However, each of them has his own interests, and may or may not act within the overall institutions best interest, and may or may not be caught doing so (and may or may not have a good handle on how they may or may not be caught, which would influence that likelyhood by directing their actions)
So the zero sum game for the bank, is true, however, its actually not a single zero sum game, but a very large zero sum game, with a large number of players. Sure, many of the players have a vested interest in the bank staying in business and being profitable. However, that doesn't mean they have a vested interest in the best possible outcome for the bank, merely avoiding ones so bad that they lose their own salaries.
Otherwise I do think game theory based assessments are among the best, but its important to recognize what games the individual players are playing.
This is the common problem of the "Sound Bite Culture" that we have.
Flip on the TV or radio (excluding NPR here, but lets face it, NPR listners are not the majority) and you will mostly hear a bunch of bullshit, no matter who you listen to. Talking heads cherry-pick quotes and figures from studies to make their point. "Experts" are encouraged to come on with their findings as quickly as possible, even talking about preliminary studies with small numbers of people, and then the "sound bite" of them talking about this one minor study, gets touted as fact all over the place.
Essentially, every side, of every issue, is out there painting a distorted collage of "facts" to support their way of thinking, and there is very little encouragement to look at an issue in depth and allow the hard realities to actually influence the way people think, just this game of picking fatcs to support already foregone conclusions.
This is what passes for political and social discourse in this world.
Case in point. There was a study on heart disease a while back, it was widely reported as showing a link between heart attacks and pot smoking. I saw it all over the news. Then... I read a more in depth article about it. It was a study of about 450 people, about 20 of which were pot smokers. The main factor it looked at was whether they had their heart attack within so many hours of the last time they smoked (and it wasn't even the main purpose of the study either), and didn't mention at all the frequency of smoking. This was a flimsy and hardly well thought out correlation, wasn't even the focus of the study, but I saw the "sound bite" ALL OVER the media for the next couple of days. They didn't even care to talk about what was actually being studied!
Its like the TSA. They go around talking bomb detectors this, and milimeter wave that, and look at what we catch. However, nobody wants to talk about the fact that there is nothing that would indicate any manner of credible threat. They say "oh look... bojinka plot". What they don't do is actually pay attention to the details of the plot that indicate A) a small group of people were responsible for several bombings as part of their testing B) It took years of work by dedicated people JUST TO FAIL and C) With those people now in custody, there is no real evidence that people like them occur often enough and capable enough to pull off these plots enough to even make the checkpoints we had pre-9/11 financially justified.
but... once again... the sound bite rules the day.
Games are addictive and make people violent. Unless you can come up with a sound bite thats more sensational than that... well... thats just the "new facts". Reality be damned.
I think we can have a simple solution here.... make all stages of illegal search criminal actions.
Its the police's responsibility to do their jobs... that means legally aquiring evidence and bringing it to court. Its their responsibility to be sure they have enough evidence and the right evidence for a judge to make his decision. ANY manner of misleading in this case means they are going outside of their responsibilities, thus not doing their job. It is not their job to make illegal searches.
Its the judges responsibility to look at the evidence, MAKE SURE HE UNDERSTANDS IT, and make a judgement on it...
Then it is the police's job to execute the warrent....
SO overall, I see someone didn't do their job. Someone was negligent to such an extent that civil rights were violated. Someone should be criminally liable. Without the due process set down in law, there is no difference between the police searching and confiscating your stuff, and any other armed gang. Without the due process of law, they should be treated as such they are.
It sounds to me like it is the judge who deserves the blame here. He obviously didn't understand the issues, he should have sent this right back to the officer and told him to gather more evidence before he insults the court as such. He should have perhaps even considered holding him in contempt for wasting the courts time with such drivel.... not approved the warrent.
Of course, after reading the motion to quash, it sounds like the Police also hold some blame for poor execution of the allegedly illegal warrent. Personally, I think the fact that they confiscated the post-it note that the defendant was using to take notes on what the police were doing shows extreme malice on the part of the police, and they deserve to be put in their place as such.
I said the same thing when I was single. For me, and I just picked up our marriage license last night, it was that I found one that I liked alot, we showed no signs of wanting anything other than eachother, and it just made the most sense financially, so we talked about it and decided to get married.
You are right to an extent but also, I do think we are somewhat wired to look for the qualities of a good mate when it comes to attraction. Sure you may not WANT to get married and have kids, but... its not like you don't want the person who you would choose to do that with if you chose to do that with. Especially for a woman. Sure we have options now, but for most of the time that humans have been living, medical alternatives to pregnancy were not around, still many choose not to use them for various reasons... overall it makes good sense for a woman to choose a mate who she COULD settle down with, even if thats not her plan.
Even for a short term thing, isn't someone who is sharing and looks out for your needs along with their own a more pleasant person than one who is out for #1 and good luck to the rest? Its like all those silly bits of manners, holding doors, etc. Its more about being aware and looking out for others than it is just about making yourself look good.
Actually I have to agree, yet concede that the original poster has a point...sorta.
Dating is defintely about mating. There are lots of girls I was friends with, less that I have had sex with, even fewer that I would have called a mate (really only the current one, and one 10 years ago). However,females I am not interested in sex with, I am not looking to date either. So sex is fundamental to mating, and only with sexual interest is "dating" going to happen..
That said, there isn't much difference between dating and going out with a friend so really... this is just a semantic circle jerk.
In any case, I think that what I see in this study is the same thing thats missing from the males you speak of (I was one of them for a while, I think many of us are at one point or another), is that these relationships are based on giving and sharing. We may look sideways at a man who tries to buy a woman gifts to win her affection, and rightfully so, but not because he is taking a totally incorrect action.
I see it as about fairness and sharing. Why would a woman, chimp or human, want to be with someone who was too selfish? Whether you are in a more "traditional nuclear" arrangement with a man who works and a woman who stays home and cleans and cooks... would you want to be a man who works all day for wage, supports his wife, and comes home to a messy house where she sat around and played video games all day? How about being a wife who keeps a spotless house and watches the kids, who takes all the money for himself, and blows it at the strip bar?
How about being the spouse who works full time, with a spouse who works part time, makes 1/3rd the money, gets home early, and still wont pick up some slack by cooking a meal a few nights a week?
The point is, everybody wants equity, everyone wants to feel both useful and appreciated. It seems that wanting to be with a sharing person is fairly fundamental. Its a quality that comes from empathy with others, and I think is why many single guys note that guys who have a woman are great at getting another... being in that sort of relationship builds your emotional skills, and that shows.
> I used to be addicted to the high, but I couldn't stand the lows - migraine-like headache for hours (sensitivity to light, sound, etc.). > I tried taking more caffeine to keep the lows away, but that ended the same - once I crashed, I got a migraine-like headache that wouldn't go away > until I got a good-nights sleep. The worst part was, I would crash DURING THE WORKDAY, so my work performance was actually suffering.
The worst I ever got it was during High School. I didn't realize that my morning ritual (repeated several times a day) of grabbing NesTea from the Vending machine and chugging them had gotten me nicely addicted. One day I forgot to bring money to school and... hoo boy was that a fun day. COld sweats, hot flashes. It was a horror show!
After that I was more careful. Usually fell into the pattern of caffiene during the day and at work, almost none at all at night or on weekends. This manages things pretty well and gives me some time to cool it off between weeks... slows down tolerance build up. I would usually stop for a week or two within a day or so of the first "morning pre-caffeine headache".
That said, a couple of years ago I noticed a change... I stopped getting to that point. I just don't get morning headaches anymore.
Its also possible that, since my sleep is better now (longer and more restful due to apnea treatment), I am not as chronically tired, thus don't need as much, and don't build up to that point. I do seem to be drinking less than I used to in my peak usage periods.
Also, I have gone through periods of peak usage both higher in dosage and longer in duration than my school time experience, and have never had quite the same severity of symptoms. Though, it may just be having developed a mental tolerance for the symptoms too. (so many areas of drug use I would love to see studied more... how do experiences of withdrawl syndromes change over multiple experiences and with different profiles of use?)
You know that nearly 100% of violent offenders consumed a drink containing at least 60% dihydrogen monoxide within the 24 hour period before their crimes?
In fact, 100% of those who are under the influence of alcohol at the time of their arrest also had dihydrogen monoxide in their blood stream.
Well, as you know, sex offenders are very likely to reoffend. Sex offenders who offend against children are extremely dangerous today. This prosecuror is doing his part to change that.
By making these girls sex offenders abusing themselves, well... soon they will be too old to reoffend! Thus drastically lowering the recidivism rate for sex offenders!
Don't you think it would be great if we could lower the number of sex offenders who reoffend later? Shit, measures like this could result in a 90% drop in reoffence rates!
Actually, I thought the problem was that prosecutors get tunnel vision from the law and feel the need to exert their authority to the fullest extent of the letter of the law.
Or more to the point, that they like being able to say "look at all we did" and know they never have to give real facts that anybody with a voice is going to bother checking. So they have incentive to pretty much fuck over anyone they can get the littlest bit of dirt on.
They seem, to me, to be the epitome of "When you have a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail". Mixed with a misguided notion of doing good, by exercising the state sanctioned use of violence against everyone and anyone who steps out of line in their sight.
They are likewise not encouraged to make sense or logic.
I have seen statements by DAs that wantonly used logical fallacy after logical fallacy to make their case. (a high percentage of people incacerated for violent crimes test positive for marijuana on intake processing.... somehow proving that A implies B, means that B implies A.... it was wrong on the SATs, its wrong in public discourse.)
Nah... I think it can be explained easier than that. Remember the corrallary of Occam's Razor "Never attribute to Malice that which can be adequetly explained by stupidity."
Also, as has been in my email signature file for a long time "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on him not understanding it".
Its like explaining to a narcotics officer the problems with prohibition. He will tell you about the dangers of drugs, the way they have no quality control, the dangerous ways they are produced, house fires, stuff thats too pure killing people, stuff thats adulturated killing people....
Yet never once can you expect acknowledgement that if it was legal and regulated, then phizer, phillip morris, and glaxco-smith-kline would produce standard product, at known purity, at reasonable prices.... and solve ALL of those problems, leaving behind the medical issue of addiction, thats really one for the doctors.
Likewise here... you can bet that a few years down the road, when the actual substance of these cases are forgotten, I think you are exactly right, he is going to trumpet his work in combatting the scourge of child exploitation.
Somehow I doubt his campaign ads will mention that he combatted the scourge of nearly-legal girls sending nudie pix to their boyfriends... of the bodies they have already been sticking parts of their own bodies into.
On this.... I would like to personally make an offer to the prosecutor in question. If he would like to come to my place here in Boston, I would be happy to beat the ever living crap out of him until he gets a damned clue. I know its generous of me to offer, but he seems to really need it and I would encourage him to take me up on it.
Actually, I would make the same offer to all of the DAs here in MA, since they seem to have similar needs as the clue doesn't seem to make its way into their skulls either.... so for the good of the nation, I will happily offer them the service of helping it through the brain/common sense barrier.
Maybe but then you can defeat the bot by not asking questions about coffee but going off topic over a range of topics. Cars, bicycles, sneakers, sports... while few people are experts on any of them, the vast majority of people know at least a little bit in each.
Hell, I don't even like baseball, but I could converse somewhat intelligently about the less esoteric rules, gameplay, and even name a few players.
of course, I don't know what restrictions are put on the form of the chat, but current events outside of a persons normal scope still, to some extent, should be there. Its hard to escape some knowledge of stimulus plans, the economy, current wars.
How about sensation related topics? Alcohol intoxication.... a computer has never experienced it, and I can almost garauntee web based writtings about it are biased more towards extreme effects than the general subjective expeience.
Overall, I think its good but... would require a great number of topics to be individually weighted. Plus you then need a way to weight the information.
It would be strange for a person to know about prussic knots or tie knot names, but not more mundane things like shoe tieing. Of course, it would be even more strange, in my experience, for someone to know what a windsor or half windsor and yet not know the "4 in hand". Most people who tie the four in hand barely are aware that it has a name.
Yet if you are using web searches well... nobody writes about shoe tieing. Everybody who can read knows how to do it. Yet there are many sites about figure eight knots.
Would it be programmed to know that "four in hand" "windsor" "square or reef" etc are ok to talk about, but shibari, chest harnesses, crotch ropes, and bondage cuff ties are less decent things to discuss in polite company? If so.... how far do you go with that?
Thats just 1 topic off the top of my head. How many topics are there where the average person should know at least a little, but WAY less than an expert? How does your AI tell the difference?
Would you believe a person who said that a cats paw around the wrist with a turn around the hand finished with a overhand is a great bondage cuff, that can be attached with a prussic to make an adjustable restraint.... but claims to have never tied a square knot?:)
That doesn't even require much knowledge of knots to differenciate. The average person knows what a square knot is, and would expect everyone else to at least have an idea (even if they can't differenciate it from a granny)
Good coffee.... in fact... I didn't really drink coffee until I spent a few weeks in France. The next year of my life was spent buying the swill I could find locally in hopes that one day I would get a cup as good as that little caffee that I spent my mornings at in Beaulieu-sur-mer
Lets bring that to caffees and restraunts in general. Its nice having a liesurly breakfast and knowing nobody is gonna come by and slam a guest cheque on the table until you ask for it.... (there is just something relaxing about it)
Of course there is the beauty of Paris, and the oppullent sights of Versailles....
Oh and the nearly seaweed free blue/green mediterranian waters.... Bars where the bartender just shrugs when you ask what time they close....
Police! Oh the police were wonderful (see if I say that here). The night I was stuck in Nice and the bar closed (around 4 am) and I slept on the steps of the train station with all the other travellers....
The police didn't wake us up and harass us and ask us why we were there, or say you have to "go elsewhere". They let us sleep and then came by and gently woke everyone up around 5 am as the trains were starting to run again so we could get where we are going.
And cocaine is perfectly legal if you have a prescription.
LSD is perfectly legal if you have a DEA Schedule 1 chemicals license.
The fact that she can buy it over the counter has no bearing on whether or not it is legal for her to possess in school.
I am not supporting the rule here, I think its absolutely fucking ridiculous. However, this is the logical conclusion of the idea that the government should be in the business of regulating what people put into their own bodies.
It started with opiates, and has just slowly grown, like a cancer on our society trying to take more and more control. Now, we have girls being strip searched for midol.
Frankly, given the sins of this dangerous idea, a strip searched girl is hardly even newsworthy. Never mind a cartel in mexico has declared they will kill every day until the chief of police steps down. A cartel primarily funded by black market drug sales... a group that couldn't grow and survive in an open market, thrives under this policy.
But a 13 year old girl was strip searched.... no really THAT is where these policies have gone too far.
Slashdot Mirror
Niether of you know what you are missing.
Sure swine may be dirty, and their flu may be bad but....
fucking bacon. Whats wrong with you people? Seriously.... bacon comes from swine! How can you heathens deny the one true breakfast meat!
-Steve
Yes.
One thing that I have never really understood.... whats so bad about being desensitized?
I mean really, do we think that the proper reaction, in just about any situation, is to immediately reduce yourself to a quivering blob of jelly? Isn't desensitization exactly what you want when a major event happens and you have to keep a calm and level head and act rationally?
I mean seriously, other than a bunch o fhand waving about the bogus dangers of "desensitization" is there really any way at all that this could be, in the least bit, harmful to children?
Seriously, if we had been a bit more "desensitized" to this extremely rare event, by a very small number of people (who are mostly all dead or captured), then maybe we wouldn't have overreacted so badly.
At current count, adding security to cockpit doors is the SINGLE change I have seen since 9/12 thats made anyone any safer. In reality, the attack vector was one that relied on passengers believing they would be involved in a bloodless standoff that was exploited. 9/11 was a 100% self correcting problem, as it educated airline passengers to a new type of terrorist plot.
As of about 11 am on 9/11 the plot could not have been repeated ever again. No new "security measures" were needed. However, being nation of ultra-sensitive cowards who like to hide behind big police forces and military might, we did a lot more than that.
I see desensitization as a good thing. Lets have them color in some suicide bomb belts while they are at it. so maybe next time we can act like mature adults rather than sacred little children.
-Steve
Or how about this example....
My own father told me once, with quite a smile on his face, that he once had the opportunity to write a paper.... and submit it to two different classes for credit! Once in history, and once in his english class. A proud achievement for some, and somewhat rare. As someone whose work often involves writting documents; I must applaud the ability to meet two deliverables with one task.
So how would that work today... Prof A gets the paper in first term. His grad-slaves submit the papers as they grade them. Prof B doesn't manage to get the papers to his grad-slaves for a couple of days... they do the same... and now... the student gets marked off for plagerizing himself? How will that work?
-Steve
Of course the scary part about that is.... well... why so many tor exit nodes in china?
If you control enough exit nodes, some attacks start to become pretty simple, especially given that default tor setups don't really enforce any sort of control over where entry and exit nodes are. A "bad guy" running rogue nodes isn't going to list his node family, so whats to stop your client from picking one of his nodes for entry, and one for exit?
Of course, if you keep a local list of allowed entry nodes, that could help, but... most tor clients are just wide open and at best select nodes that are "registered". All a person would really need is one unique email address per node to register with.
I hope its because there are so many people in china, that there are enough people who care about privacy and run nodes. However, its entirely possible this is also an attack on tor. Though, whose to say the NSA doesn't run half the US nodes?
-Steve
Yes, as a fair use proponent I agree with the decision. Though, even if it didn't apply as an "unpublished work", I still don't see this as a problematic use, in that I don't see any reasonable expectation of confidentiality. If there was one, certainly not one that would extend to expecting the professor would not store, or otherwise use his paper in accordance with the needs of the professor and institution to fairly dole out credit (including keeping, or causing others to keep, a copy for purposes of checking for plagerism now and in the future).
This "use" is quite "fair". Now, if the professor was posting the papers online himself for others to read.... or selling compendiums of papers etc.... thats another story. However, this sort of use seems quite reasonable, and unreasonable to put restrictions around beyond basic protection of the privacy of the student involved (oooh... now how does this relate to FERPA? ... which often does, in some part, apply to students (I used to work in University IT) )
What I find worriesome is the technology itself. Essays are often about similar topics. Papers are seldom about really original topics or even originals slants. Overall, amongst the growing number of similar papers out there, I do wonder how long it will be before their false positive rate starts to climb? Will we begin to see students accused of plagerism for nothing more than not thinking of much new to say, and having a writting style similar to some other unoriginal sod with the same paper topic?
Sure, the chances that someone else will write the same paper you did is pretty small, even with lots and lots of papers. However, what about the chances that any two people in a wide database of student papers will write almost the same paper, given the same topic, and same sources. That question worries me far more as I fear that as time goes on, the chances of this happening approaches 1.
-Steve
So essentially....
They put out big open relays, then were surprized when people started relaying traffic through them. Does this make anyone else think of SMTP servers? They should be thankful there is a built in self-correcting problem if anyone decided to starty blasting advertising through there.
Or better yet.... declare these things open to the damned public and replace them with something that isn't just a wide open relay!
I mean come on... you can only bitch so much if you arn't willing to install access controls that will keep people out. If anyone is capable of this.... its the US Military. Frankly... its in that category of "If you leave your car running with the doors unlocked on a city street, how much sympathy should you expect from me when it gets stolen?" At least all they can do is tie up some bandwidth.... its not like they downed and recovered the satellite and now have it up on blocks by the side of the ocean with all the good parts stripped.
I think the real message to the military here should be "take it as a lesson and cut your losses now". Cuz we can (and will) argue till we are red in the fingers about whether its right or wrong or people should be punished.... what you can't stop you can't stop. A little reality is worth a fuckton of theory. Reality states they are fucked by their own shortsightedness. Just replace this junk and move on.
Maybe a better analogy... if you leave an old dead VW minibus on your lot by the road for a few years... its ugly sure, but so what. Now when a homeless guy moves in...and you have to kick him out... yes... its his bad. However, when its the 5th homeless guy this year... does it really matter whose bad it is?
-Steve
Not in front of any judge worth a.... oh never mind.
-Steve
> I am not sure that security can be evaluated by past performance. "Hasn't cost us much yet" doesn't seem like a good indication of whether it
> will continue to cost more in the future. It is, after all, similar to saying that a predator won't do much damage to a prey which doesn't
> have natural defenses based on how little damage such a predator has done so far.
Ahh but whats to say we should expect an increase in the future, and not a decrease?
That would require that we know how the number of predators have changed, and their relationship with whatever population we are concerned about.
Its the old "80/20 rule". If we are worried about tiger attacks, we can institute a new protection every time an attack happens.... but do you continue that policy past the point of diminishing returns? What if the next level of "tiger protection" involves everyone smearing themselves in the dung of some animal which we have determined repels tigers? At what point do you say "Oh shit, you mean this is getting too costly to stop the 1 attack a year we still have?"
Take it to air travel... how many flights are hijacked as a percentage of flights flown? Ill give you a hint, its very very small.
-Steve
> it was to ail a very real problem of people taking literature, translating it and selling it in foreign countries with no revenue going to
> the original artist or publisher.
What I find interesting here is that this is roughly the same problem as was described in a post here about child porn. That it... this all originated back in a time when only professionals with some serious bankroll could do this. You used to need a printing press, which was beyond the means of the average person... just like kiddie pornographers used to need large studios and cameras etc.
Now... well... we have 15 year olds going around taking nudie pix for their boyfriend, and suddenly child porn charges are comming out. Oh wait... thats whats happening with other content too!
I think its kind of funny that we started with laws because people with extraordinary means were taking advantage of people with lesser means.. and now we are applying them to a situation that has been turned on its ear by technology.
-Steve
You are right, but at the same time... unlike many of the other major media outlets, they actually do have a fair amount of what I would consider reasoned discourse. They are not spot on all the time, they still have a fair amount of bullshit from every side. However, its one of the few places I have seen an in depth discussion on any topic that wasn't all sound bites and frothing at the mouth.... look at shows like "on point" or "Talk of the nation" and they really do at least seem to try to avoid being just a superficial sound bite pissing match.
Sure they don't always triumph in that regard, but they seem to me to be the only ones in broadcast media even trying.
-Steve
Interesting. However, that isn't enough information to determine if thats relevant. Sure, we can build consensus but on what? First we need consensus that there is a problem, then that it actually needs to be solved, then on a solution. Whats to say you wont end up building consensus around a solution that doesn't actually work? What if the consensus is "this doesn't cost us enough to be worth working together, lets go get lunch"?
-Steve
Your assessment sounds spot on to me... if we make the assumption that "the bank" is a single entity with a single purpose and logically gaurds its own interests.
However, when we put people into the equation, we have a bank as a collection of actors, whose job it is to act in the best interest. However, each of them has his own interests, and may or may not act within the overall institutions best interest, and may or may not be caught doing so (and may or may not have a good handle on how they may or may not be caught, which would influence that likelyhood by directing their actions)
So the zero sum game for the bank, is true, however, its actually not a single zero sum game, but a very large zero sum game, with a large number of players. Sure, many of the players have a vested interest in the bank staying in business and being profitable. However, that doesn't mean they have a vested interest in the best possible outcome for the bank, merely avoiding ones so bad that they lose their own salaries.
Otherwise I do think game theory based assessments are among the best, but its important to recognize what games the individual players are playing.
-Steve
This is the common problem of the "Sound Bite Culture" that we have.
Flip on the TV or radio (excluding NPR here, but lets face it, NPR listners are not the majority) and you will mostly hear a bunch of bullshit, no matter who you listen to. Talking heads cherry-pick quotes and figures from studies to make their point. "Experts" are encouraged to come on with their findings as quickly as possible, even talking about preliminary studies with small numbers of people, and then the "sound bite" of them talking about this one minor study, gets touted as fact all over the place.
Essentially, every side, of every issue, is out there painting a distorted collage of "facts" to support their way of thinking, and there is very little encouragement to look at an issue in depth and allow the hard realities to actually influence the way people think, just this game of picking fatcs to support already foregone conclusions.
This is what passes for political and social discourse in this world.
Case in point. There was a study on heart disease a while back, it was widely reported as showing a link between heart attacks and pot smoking. I saw it all over the news. Then... I read a more in depth article about it. It was a study of about 450 people, about 20 of which were pot smokers. The main factor it looked at was whether they had their heart attack within so many hours of the last time they smoked (and it wasn't even the main purpose of the study either), and didn't mention at all the frequency of smoking. This was a flimsy and hardly well thought out correlation, wasn't even the focus of the study, but I saw the "sound bite" ALL OVER the media for the next couple of days. They didn't even care to talk about what was actually being studied!
Its like the TSA. They go around talking bomb detectors this, and milimeter wave that, and look at what we catch. However, nobody wants to talk about the fact that there is nothing that would indicate any manner of credible threat. They say "oh look... bojinka plot". What they don't do is actually pay attention to the details of the plot that indicate A) a small group of people were responsible for several bombings as part of their testing B) It took years of work by dedicated people JUST TO FAIL and C) With those people now in custody, there is no real evidence that people like them occur often enough and capable enough to pull off these plots enough to even make the checkpoints we had pre-9/11 financially justified.
but... once again... the sound bite rules the day.
Games are addictive and make people violent. Unless you can come up with a sound bite thats more sensational than that... well... thats just the "new facts". Reality be damned.
-Steve
Seems that we have encryption/signing protocols that don't require decryption for all operations... seems we also have public key encryption....
We already have onion routing... where we have end to end and point to point encryption in layers....
Seems the bankers should take a look at other technologies and consider some updates in how they handle it.
-Steve
I think we can have a simple solution here.... make all stages of illegal search criminal actions.
Its the police's responsibility to do their jobs... that means legally aquiring evidence and bringing it to court. Its their responsibility to be sure they have enough evidence and the right evidence for a judge to make his decision. ANY manner of misleading in this case means they are going outside of their responsibilities, thus not doing their job. It is not their job to make illegal searches.
Its the judges responsibility to look at the evidence, MAKE SURE HE UNDERSTANDS IT, and make a judgement on it...
Then it is the police's job to execute the warrent....
SO overall, I see someone didn't do their job. Someone was negligent to such an extent that civil rights were violated. Someone should be criminally liable. Without the due process set down in law, there is no difference between the police searching and confiscating your stuff, and any other armed gang. Without the due process of law, they should be treated as such they are.
It sounds to me like it is the judge who deserves the blame here. He obviously didn't understand the issues, he should have sent this right back to the officer and told him to gather more evidence before he insults the court as such. He should have perhaps even considered holding him in contempt for wasting the courts time with such drivel.... not approved the warrent.
Of course, after reading the motion to quash, it sounds like the Police also hold some blame for poor execution of the allegedly illegal warrent. Personally, I think the fact that they confiscated the post-it note that the defendant was using to take notes on what the police were doing shows extreme malice on the part of the police, and they deserve to be put in their place as such.
-Steve
I said the same thing when I was single. For me, and I just picked up our marriage license last night, it was that I found one that I liked alot, we showed no signs of wanting anything other than eachother, and it just made the most sense financially, so we talked about it and decided to get married.
You are right to an extent but also, I do think we are somewhat wired to look for the qualities of a good mate when it comes to attraction. Sure you may not WANT to get married and have kids, but... its not like you don't want the person who you would choose to do that with if you chose to do that with. Especially for a woman. Sure we have options now, but for most of the time that humans have been living, medical alternatives to pregnancy were not around, still many choose not to use them for various reasons... overall it makes good sense for a woman to choose a mate who she COULD settle down with, even if thats not her plan.
Even for a short term thing, isn't someone who is sharing and looks out for your needs along with their own a more pleasant person than one who is out for #1 and good luck to the rest? Its like all those silly bits of manners, holding doors, etc. Its more about being aware and looking out for others than it is just about making yourself look good.
-Steve
Actually I have to agree, yet concede that the original poster has a point...sorta.
Dating is defintely about mating. There are lots of girls I was friends with, less that I have had sex with, even fewer that I would have called a mate (really only the current one, and one 10 years ago). However,females I am not interested in sex with, I am not looking to date either. So sex is fundamental to mating, and only with sexual interest is "dating" going to happen..
That said, there isn't much difference between dating and going out with a friend so really... this is just a semantic circle jerk.
In any case, I think that what I see in this study is the same thing thats missing from the males you speak of (I was one of them for a while, I think many of us are at one point or another), is that these relationships are based on giving and sharing. We may look sideways at a man who tries to buy a woman gifts to win her affection, and rightfully so, but not because he is taking a totally incorrect action.
I see it as about fairness and sharing. Why would a woman, chimp or human, want to be with someone who was too selfish? Whether you are in a more "traditional nuclear" arrangement with a man who works and a woman who stays home and cleans and cooks... would you want to be a man who works all day for wage, supports his wife, and comes home to a messy house where she sat around and played video games all day? How about being a wife who keeps a spotless house and watches the kids, who takes all the money for himself, and blows it at the strip bar?
How about being the spouse who works full time, with a spouse who works part time, makes 1/3rd the money, gets home early, and still wont pick up some slack by cooking a meal a few nights a week?
The point is, everybody wants equity, everyone wants to feel both useful and appreciated. It seems that wanting to be with a sharing person is fairly fundamental. Its a quality that comes from empathy with others, and I think is why many single guys note that guys who have a woman are great at getting another... being in that sort of relationship builds your emotional skills, and that shows.
-Steve
> I used to be addicted to the high, but I couldn't stand the lows - migraine-like headache for hours (sensitivity to light, sound, etc.).
> I tried taking more caffeine to keep the lows away, but that ended the same - once I crashed, I got a migraine-like headache that wouldn't go away
> until I got a good-nights sleep. The worst part was, I would crash DURING THE WORKDAY, so my work performance was actually suffering.
The worst I ever got it was during High School. I didn't realize that my morning ritual (repeated several times a day) of grabbing NesTea from the Vending machine and chugging them had gotten me nicely addicted. One day I forgot to bring money to school and... hoo boy was that a fun day. COld sweats, hot flashes. It was a horror show!
After that I was more careful. Usually fell into the pattern of caffiene during the day and at work, almost none at all at night or on weekends. This manages things pretty well and gives me some time to cool it off between weeks... slows down tolerance build up. I would usually stop for a week or two within a day or so of the first "morning pre-caffeine headache".
That said, a couple of years ago I noticed a change... I stopped getting to that point. I just don't get morning headaches anymore.
Its also possible that, since my sleep is better now (longer and more restful due to apnea treatment), I am not as chronically tired, thus don't need as much, and don't build up to that point. I do seem to be drinking less than I used to in my peak usage periods.
Also, I have gone through periods of peak usage both higher in dosage and longer in duration than my school time experience, and have never had quite the same severity of symptoms. Though, it may just be having developed a mental tolerance for the symptoms too. (so many areas of drug use I would love to see studied more... how do experiences of withdrawl syndromes change over multiple experiences and with different profiles of use?)
-Steve
You know that nearly 100% of violent offenders consumed a drink containing at least 60% dihydrogen monoxide within the 24 hour period before their crimes?
In fact, 100% of those who are under the influence of alcohol at the time of their arrest also had dihydrogen monoxide in their blood stream.
-Steve
Well, as you know, sex offenders are very likely to reoffend. Sex offenders who offend against children are extremely dangerous today. This prosecuror is doing his part to change that.
By making these girls sex offenders abusing themselves, well... soon they will be too old to reoffend! Thus drastically lowering the recidivism rate for sex offenders!
Don't you think it would be great if we could lower the number of sex offenders who reoffend later? Shit, measures like this could result in a 90% drop in reoffence rates!
-Steve
Actually, I thought the problem was that prosecutors get tunnel vision from the law and feel the need to exert their authority to the fullest extent of the letter of the law.
Or more to the point, that they like being able to say "look at all we did" and know they never have to give real facts that anybody with a voice is going to bother checking. So they have incentive to pretty much fuck over anyone they can get the littlest bit of dirt on.
They seem, to me, to be the epitome of "When you have a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail". Mixed with a misguided notion of doing good, by exercising the state sanctioned use of violence against everyone and anyone who steps out of line in their sight.
They are likewise not encouraged to make sense or logic.
I have seen statements by DAs that wantonly used logical fallacy after logical fallacy to make their case. (a high percentage of people incacerated for violent crimes test positive for marijuana on intake processing.... somehow proving that A implies B, means that B implies A.... it was wrong on the SATs, its wrong in public discourse.)
-Steve
Nah... I think it can be explained easier than that. Remember the corrallary of Occam's Razor "Never attribute to Malice that which can be adequetly explained by stupidity."
Also, as has been in my email signature file for a long time "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on him not understanding it".
Its like explaining to a narcotics officer the problems with prohibition. He will tell you about the dangers of drugs, the way they have no quality control, the dangerous ways they are produced, house fires, stuff thats too pure killing people, stuff thats adulturated killing people....
Yet never once can you expect acknowledgement that if it was legal and regulated, then phizer, phillip morris, and glaxco-smith-kline would produce standard product, at known purity, at reasonable prices.... and solve ALL of those problems, leaving behind the medical issue of addiction, thats really one for the doctors.
Likewise here... you can bet that a few years down the road, when the actual substance of these cases are forgotten, I think you are exactly right, he is going to trumpet his work in combatting the scourge of child exploitation.
Somehow I doubt his campaign ads will mention that he combatted the scourge of nearly-legal girls sending nudie pix to their boyfriends... of the bodies they have already been sticking parts of their own bodies into.
On this.... I would like to personally make an offer to the prosecutor in question. If he would like to come to my place here in Boston, I would be happy to beat the ever living crap out of him until he gets a damned clue. I know its generous of me to offer, but he seems to really need it and I would encourage him to take me up on it.
Actually, I would make the same offer to all of the DAs here in MA, since they seem to have similar needs as the clue doesn't seem to make its way into their skulls either.... so for the good of the nation, I will happily offer them the service of helping it through the brain/common sense barrier.
-Steve
Maybe but then you can defeat the bot by not asking questions about coffee but going off topic over a range of topics. Cars, bicycles, sneakers, sports... while few people are experts on any of them, the vast majority of people know at least a little bit in each.
Hell, I don't even like baseball, but I could converse somewhat intelligently about the less esoteric rules, gameplay, and even name a few players.
of course, I don't know what restrictions are put on the form of the chat, but current events outside of a persons normal scope still, to some extent, should be there. Its hard to escape some knowledge of stimulus plans, the economy, current wars.
How about sensation related topics? Alcohol intoxication.... a computer has never experienced it, and I can almost garauntee web based writtings about it are biased more towards extreme effects than the general subjective expeience.
Overall, I think its good but... would require a great number of topics to be individually weighted. Plus you then need a way to weight the information.
It would be strange for a person to know about prussic knots or tie knot names, but not more mundane things like shoe tieing. Of course, it would be even more strange, in my experience, for someone to know what a windsor or half windsor and yet not know the "4 in hand". Most people who tie the four in hand barely are aware that it has a name.
Yet if you are using web searches well... nobody writes about shoe tieing. Everybody who can read knows how to do it. Yet there are many sites about figure eight knots.
Would it be programmed to know that "four in hand" "windsor" "square or reef" etc are ok to talk about, but shibari, chest harnesses, crotch ropes, and bondage cuff ties are less decent things to discuss in polite company? If so.... how far do you go with that?
Thats just 1 topic off the top of my head. How many topics are there where the average person should know at least a little, but WAY less than an expert? How does your AI tell the difference?
Would you believe a person who said that a cats paw around the wrist with a turn around the hand finished with a overhand is a great bondage cuff, that can be attached with a prussic to make an adjustable restraint.... but claims to have never tied a square knot? :)
That doesn't even require much knowledge of knots to differenciate. The average person knows what a square knot is, and would expect everyone else to at least have an idea (even if they can't differenciate it from a granny)
-Steve
Good coffee.... in fact... I didn't really drink coffee until I spent a few weeks in France. The next year of my life was spent buying the swill I could find locally in hopes that one day I would get a cup as good as that little caffee that I spent my mornings at in Beaulieu-sur-mer
Lets bring that to caffees and restraunts in general. Its nice having a liesurly breakfast and knowing nobody is gonna come by and slam a guest cheque on the table until you ask for it.... (there is just something relaxing about it)
Of course there is the beauty of Paris, and the oppullent sights of Versailles....
Oh and the nearly seaweed free blue/green mediterranian waters.... Bars where the bartender just shrugs when you ask what time they close....
Police! Oh the police were wonderful (see if I say that here). The night I was stuck in Nice and the bar closed (around 4 am) and I slept on the steps of the train station with all the other travellers....
The police didn't wake us up and harass us and ask us why we were there, or say you have to "go elsewhere". They let us sleep and then came by and gently woke everyone up around 5 am as the trains were starting to run again so we could get where we are going.
We could learn a lot from the French about life.
-Steve
And cocaine is perfectly legal if you have a prescription.
LSD is perfectly legal if you have a DEA Schedule 1 chemicals license.
The fact that she can buy it over the counter has no bearing on whether or not it is legal for her to possess in school.
I am not supporting the rule here, I think its absolutely fucking ridiculous. However, this is the logical conclusion of the idea that the government should be in the business of regulating what people put into their own bodies.
It started with opiates, and has just slowly grown, like a cancer on our society trying to take more and more control. Now, we have girls being strip searched for midol.
Frankly, given the sins of this dangerous idea, a strip searched girl is hardly even newsworthy. Never mind a cartel in mexico has declared they will kill every day until the chief of police steps down. A cartel primarily funded by black market drug sales... a group that couldn't grow and survive in an open market, thrives under this policy.
But a 13 year old girl was strip searched.... no really THAT is where these policies have gone too far.
-Steve