Either those, or he found an alien spacecraft. One of the three... There is no reason to limit it to one of the three, all three or any combination of two is possible....... They're not mutually exclusive.
and sharp too. Not to be picky, but its probably fairly smooth, due to the melting going through the atmosphere. Admittedly I haven't seen a picture of the thing, since the site is not responding. Not to be picky back, but if you were to take a smooth thing and slam it on the ground realy hard, there is a reasonable change of getting sharp bits...
It's not like you can stick it in your pocket and walk away, even if you are that Russian boxer dude that killed Apollo Creed......
The foundation's director Yury Lavbin claimed to have discovered the wreckage of an alien spacecraft during the expedition. And the article goes on to say that it just disappeared. (I'm not clear if it was the spaceship or the rock..... or maybe the rock was the spaceship....) Damn, and we were so close to proving the Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith are real.......
To start - I'm a libertarian, I'm very opposed to the current administrations handiling of a number of items, not the least of which is the impinging of my right to privacy, the handling of the "War on Terror", and getting us into a war in Iraq that I still fail to see how it benefits the US citizen. I have taken a bit of criticism from my friends by asking that question, but my response is and has been "When you spend US solders lives and Billions of US dollars, it seems to me that there should be an answer to the 'What did we purchase?' question."
That said, Karl Rove's handling of the 2000 presidential election was excellent, but the 2004 presidential election was masterful. Granted, the democrats helped some (and appear to be helping again now, for that matter), but there is no way Bush would have been re-elected without his help. In any normal situation the incompetency of any of those three items would have cost Bush the 2004 elections. I'm kind of sorry to see him go, regardless of my opinion of the administrations polices, Karl Rove is a master of politics and for good or for badad, I think he should have stuck around to see it though, there is only another 18 months in the administration, after all, and I'm sure he's on the short list of blanket pardons that Bush is going to write as he exits his term in office.
Besides that, who is left for the media to target? Dick? He is already a target, and doesn't care. He has so much "clout" in Washington that he can, and does, ignore everyone and do his own thing.
That science, literature, poetry, all those things we have created beyond ourselves could be meaningless to the universe. I don't think so, but I recognize my bias. I value those things, so I think that they are important. The universe, on the other hand, may not give a flip one way or another about those things, valuing something else entirely, like ecological balance, or ability to create heavy metals or maybe even entropy. Sagan also said Life was the only anti-entropic force. If so, maybe nature will be glad when we are gone. But, that is anthropomorphizing the universe and she really hates that.
I can't see how this new thing will generate any more thrust, or more efficient thrust than the monofin does, and it has to suffer from the same basic flaw, you get lots of thrust, but sacrifice maneuverability. (not to mention the monofin isn't going to crack you in the nuts.....)
First - look up straw man argument http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man. You just tried, and you are not very good at it.
Actually no, it is perfectly valid. The tool is never in and of itself evil. It is the person who uses it, that directs it, and makes choices for it's use that creates evil. Second - Evil != Dangerous. Dangerous is something that could inflict harm. Evil is something else entirely. I said dangerous, not evil. And yes, a tool can be dangerous, and the internet is one such tool.
By your stretch of logic anything that can cause harm is inherently going to cause harm regardless of human action, you are being imprecise and quite silly. Third - I didn't say that the ability to cause harm equated to harm being done. I said Dangerous. Dangerous means the possibility of harm exists. Your own remarks indicate you agree the potential is there.
My reasoning is meant to extend to almost anything. It is not a useless bit of information since instead of blaming the tool for existing, you blame the person which used it, whom you then analyze to see why they used it in such a manner instead of assuming because it the tool is what it is. Which then results in a clearer understand of human nature and society. Forth - Blame? (cough..cough) By identifying danger we identify the risk. We can work to lessen the danger (which is done). We can instruct users on how to mitigate the dangers (which is done). And we can respond to abuse when the worse occurs (which is done).
Deny the danger and it's game over.
Lets put it in a different context. You would argue that a gun is not dangerous. Only the drivers of cars on the road are dangerous. I would argue that guns are dangerous, teaching someone how to handle guns, good idea, because they are dangerous, when handled correctly, the danger is less, but not totally gone. You may feel free to insert "Table Saw", "Bathtub" and "Dildo" for "Gun" as the only change is amount of danger.
The problem I have with the statement in question is that saying the internet (a non-living thing without intelligence or conscience) "can be a dangerous thing" quickly becomes the internet "is a dangerous thing". Fifth - The logical fallacy is yours. You make two false assumptions here, to add to the mass of false assumptions you have already made. 1: You assume that to be defines dangerous, the thing must be cognitive. 2: You assume that can be dangerous != is dangerous.
Apparently you need a little bit of help with the language: Dangerous means (from Webster) "Able or likely to cause harm" for example (also from Webster) "Ice was making the roads dangerous."
We should be able to agree that ice, in this sense, does not conform to your usage or objection (I haven't met any ice with an agenda.... Maybe you have).
I don't particularly care if you agree that Webster is a good source to cite or not. It is a respected resource. I have a reasonable expectation that my usage will be understood by the literate.
Which now spreads and becomes "true" simply due to a contextual and logical error by the ill-informed. Now you have inserted irrational thoughts into a general populace which then spreads the same basic logic flaw to other tools. If you think thats preposterous, then you should pay more attention to the world around you. You made an assertion that is false. That it is irrational to treat the internet as a dangerous thing. Yet, we see botnets, DoS, virii, spam, stalking, identity theft, etceteras, documented daily. There is nothing irrational about treating something dangerous as something dangerous.
What I think is preposterous is the whole "Evil" == "Dangerous" thing you are promoting.... Taking the stance that to be dangerous requires intelligence and then equating dangerous with evil (which really Does require a thinking being) was pretty preposterus all by itself. The rest of your remarks were icing on the cake.
Well if you wanna be technical about it, the internet itself is not dangerous. It by itself does nothing, but the users of the internet, well thats another story. Using the same reasoning; Guns, automobiles, bathtubs, electricity event nuclear weapons are not dangerous. These items are safe until used, at which point a certain amount of danger occurs. Much like the "Guns don't kill people, people kill people" remark, it's a true but useless bit of information. The expressed design of the thing includes the interaction with a human being(s). Similarly, without the users, the internet does not exist. So a remark that the internet can be a dangerous place is more than accurate enough for the context of this conversation.
Geez, you'd think that a user on/. would get that.. I'm sure there is some value in social networking sites for educational use, even though nothing comes to mind at the moment. But, the summation is wrong, the internet IS dangerous. I'm sure that, pulling stats out of my butt notwithstanding, fear of social networking sites IS overblown, but that does not mean the danger isn't there.
When do I get to mod an Article "Stupid Summation"?
I'm new to it all also. I've worked at this company a few months and have designed two separate applications, while maintaining/improving a third. All I can say is it seems that I'm a better developer than the people that came before.. The project I've had to maintain is garbage spaghetti code that was said to have been developed over a few years, and would take me 6 months tops to write from scratch. I'm not saying I'm good at what I do but I am saying whoever came before was terrible at what they do. This boggles my mind considering that it was written by 'Senior' developers, who probably make double what I do. I obviously haven't seen the code you're talking about and hove no opinion of it. However, I've heard this crap from new programmers for years. So let me through some ideas your way.
1. it isn't garbage and spaghetti because you have difficulty following the technique, there are a thousand ways to do anything. It's garbage and spaghetti when it doesn't work well, and when it's under documented. 2. Could you really write it in six months without referencing the code you are talking about? It's one thing to write code when the problems have been solved, quite another to solve the problems. 3. the scope of a job changes over time. For a new programmer, start looking for scope creep, it's a friend and an enemy. 4. code changes over time because languages change over time. Look for those situations in the spaghetti code where those guys that you are better than wrote functions that were not available in the language. You may get a surprise that they did something really elegant to overcome something missing in the language originally that exists now. 5. lets say that there were five programmers on the code before you, one after another. The first four might have been gods gift to programming, it only takes one pretentious newbie in the chain to really screw up pretty code.
certainly none of these apply to your project, but it's something to think about as you are exposed to projects in your career.
If you are going to be so condescending and pedantic, learn how to spell foremost correctly. You made a complete ass of yourself with that error. Unless, of course, he thinks that tracking system is "For Most" of the users out there.
Seriously, if you are going to chide someone for being condescending and pedantic, then just do it. Pointing out a common grammatical error or spelling mistake, or some other minor posting error makes you look like a complete ass who needs to justify your your commentary. Besides, it's potentially misleading as well; you seem to be indicating that his post would have been acceptable, if he spelled that one word correctly. That you went to the trouble to point it out at all indicates otherwise.
The article actually says that is the goal, I'm not exactly sure what you think you are pointing out here. When you look at the purpose of the system, it's to speed up the process of identifying suspects. In all reality it just means that people breaking the law will have a harder time slipping past the officer without being noticed. There are no new laws associated with this and there is nothing different then current police operations other then the fact it can be done at a much higher volume.
No, there is a critical difference between this new technology and the current practice elsewhere. The Law Enforcement professionals are not collecting a database of the location of a 90% of the vehicles in a given area and time. This isn't about Catching criminals or identifying stolen vehicles, those are good things. It's about tracking the movements of people who have NOT broken any laws. Simply put, If I'm not doing anything wrong, I want law enforcement personnel to keep their hands off of me and mine.
And the related "if I've done nothing wrong, I have nothing to hide." WRONG! I have a wallet. There is nothing illegal in it, I still don't want a stranger riffling through it. There is a nice love note from my wife in there, it's not even racy, but it does have sentimental value to me, and it's something only she and I share and it has value just for that reason.
First of all, burning an American flag is already illegal... not to mention a good way to get yourself injured/killed by patriotic citizens.
Are you stupid or misinformed? The fact that you don't know what the laws actually are in this country, in and of itself short circuits pretty much everything you assert about the laws in this country and the way LE does it's job, now doesn't it? Or, to put it simply, don't assert that something is true when it's not. Or at least pick an assertion that takes some effort to refute. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_desecration#Unit ed_States
Now, who decides what laws are asinine? You used the example of the American flag, only to then turn around and try to defend drug abuse. In my book, drug addicts are the most significant problem we deal with today in the country. In Oregon, according to the last article I read, 80% of all property crime in the state was methamphetamine related. Since we disagree, are drug laws asinine or not?
Well, the people SUBJECT to those laws are supposed to be the ones who determine, ultimately, if a law is asinine. the path here is to vote legislators in who will write, and repeal, the laws of the land to accommodate what the people want. the Justice department is supposed to determine whether or not the law has been violated, this includes, ultimately, if a law violates the supreme law of the land. It's been noted before, and will be again, that the constitution actually reserves all right to the citizenry except as the constitution expressly provides otherwise.
Contrary to your off the cuff remark, the most significant problem in this country today is that you don't control your own life, it's controlled by a lot of special interest groups that have more power in promoting and preventing legislation than the people who are to be governed do, simply because the will of the people is not responded to. I'm not going to pull statistics out of my butt, but I will use an example. It's pretty clear that a majority of the populace drank alcohol during prohibition, thus violating the law. Yet the law got passed by a combination of media and special interest lobbying across the country (it was an amendment to the Constitution, rather than a normal "Law"). That one rectified itself to a certain extent, with the repeal of that amendment. The thing about laws is this: it doesn't matter if they are "right", "wrong", "Moral" or "immoral". What matters is that the people give up power to government to gov
The reaction's been negative because this simply isn't FUD. If you're going to call every single bit of marketese "FUD", pretty soon the term will be meaningless. If you're going to be hatin' Microsoft, then at least try to remain honest and truthful yourself. Ah, so sorry, the FUD moniker became a meaningless term about 50 seconds after it was coined.
For a term to have meaning, it must have a scope and we must agree on the scope for it to be useful. I believe FUD has failed in both cases. The term developed scope creep (thus it had an ever widening scope) and it developed marketing spin (thus having no set meaning, and frequently wagged the dog, as it were) from the onset of popular usage.
I still try to use it on occasion. My preference is to either create FUD about FUD, or for it's humor value (come to think of it, that's redundant, sorry about that...).
I... wha... ha... za... fuh? Either the words don't exist to describe just how stupid these people are, or I'm too stupid to describe how stupid they are. And the FOX reporters are worse! Why make a choice?
Other than it being one of the worst "spin" attempts I've seen, I have to admit, it was worth it for the amusement value. visions of a mob of geeks, derringers hidden in their pocket protectors.... Drive by shootings from late model Scooters.....
thanks, everyone, really cheered me up this morning.
"Having fat friends makes you fat" implies that if you have fat friends, you have no choice but to become fat. This is untrue. Article is, once again, idiotic and pure flamebait.
Way to go, samzenpus. Slashdot, sigh. Not really, it said there is an inclination to become obese if you have obese friends and family. It didn't comment on the obvious - you tend to have the same activity level as those you associate with socially. the quick comparison is this, if your friends mountain bike, then you will likely do so. If your friends sit around the tv all day with donuts, you probably will do the same thing when you are with them. I don't believe there is any challenge to the idea that your activity level is associated with your level of obesity.
What annoys me about articles like this is that there is an implication, both by the title, and in the copy itself, that there is some sort of virus or bacteria causing the "Obesity Epidemic" - thus we focus on finding a "Cure" for the "Disease". You can argue that this social programming is contagious since it does seem to have a lot of lemming type behavior causing the problem. But perpetuating the "I'm fat because I'm infected" myth only allows people to shirk responsibility onto someone or something else. - And that is annoying, I don't think people take as much responsibility for their own actions as they should. And I think we focus too much on who is a fault, rather than finding a solution to a problem.
Wait, so someone who claims, without providing proof, that they found/created a vulnerability in an operating system is now claiming to have received death threats and claiming that their blog was hacked? Again, without providing any real proof?
Uh, yeah. Count me skeptical.
Can anyone say "attention whore." "Cynical" is more like it..... But you are not the only one...
A big "Thank You!" to you for the most of the world hating Linux. there are over 6 billion people in this world. "most" would have to be more than half.... So you are asserting that more than three billion people hate Linux? Thank you for pulling another stupid statistic out of your ass..... I'd think you've be hard pressed to prove that more than half of the world even knows what Linux is, much less "Hating" it....
Marketing is cheaper than R&D. R&D is pretty much irrelivent in the context of Vista at this point. We're into engineering now (and "Field techs".) R&D is the stuff you do today that may or may not yield something new next week, month or year. Vista is now, and is in the wild... So the responses are more limited: repair, obfuscate, spin, and ignore. Marketing focuses on the last three, the software engineers the first (and sometimes the second).
What all these "Marketing is cheaper than" comments seem to miss is that Testing is cheaper when the public will do it for free. It's a common mantra, and one not even remotely limited to MicroSoft.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not like you can stick it in your pocket and walk away, even if you are that Russian boxer dude that killed Apollo Creed...... The foundation's director Yury Lavbin claimed to have discovered the wreckage of an alien spacecraft during the expedition. And the article goes on to say that it just disappeared. (I'm not clear if it was the spaceship or the rock..... or maybe the rock was the spaceship....) Damn, and we were so close to proving the Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith are real.......
I don't have anything resembling a lengthy commentary - not my field of expertise, but, Damn, That is really cool!
To start - I'm a libertarian, I'm very opposed to the current administrations handiling of a number of items, not the least of which is the impinging of my right to privacy, the handling of the "War on Terror", and getting us into a war in Iraq that I still fail to see how it benefits the US citizen. I have taken a bit of criticism from my friends by asking that question, but my response is and has been "When you spend US solders lives and Billions of US dollars, it seems to me that there should be an answer to the 'What did we purchase?' question."
That said, Karl Rove's handling of the 2000 presidential election was excellent, but the 2004 presidential election was masterful. Granted, the democrats helped some (and appear to be helping again now, for that matter), but there is no way Bush would have been re-elected without his help. In any normal situation the incompetency of any of those three items would have cost Bush the 2004 elections. I'm kind of sorry to see him go, regardless of my opinion of the administrations polices, Karl Rove is a master of politics and for good or for badad, I think he should have stuck around to see it though, there is only another 18 months in the administration, after all, and I'm sure he's on the short list of blanket pardons that Bush is going to write as he exits his term in office.
Besides that, who is left for the media to target? Dick? He is already a target, and doesn't care. He has so much "clout" in Washington that he can, and does, ignore everyone and do his own thing.
That science, literature, poetry, all those things we have created beyond ourselves could be meaningless to the universe. I don't think so, but I recognize my bias. I value those things, so I think that they are important. The universe, on the other hand, may not give a flip one way or another about those things, valuing something else entirely, like ecological balance, or ability to create heavy metals or maybe even entropy. Sagan also said Life was the only anti-entropic force. If so, maybe nature will be glad when we are gone. But, that is anthropomorphizing the universe and she really hates that.
The monofin (backwards pointing) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monofin has been around since the Soviets introduced it in the early 70's.
I can't see how this new thing will generate any more thrust, or more efficient thrust than the monofin does, and it has to suffer from the same basic flaw, you get lots of thrust, but sacrifice maneuverability. (not to mention the monofin isn't going to crack you in the nuts.....)
First - look up straw man argument http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man. You just tried, and you are not very good at it. Actually no, it is perfectly valid. The tool is never in and of itself evil. It is the person who uses it, that directs it, and makes choices for it's use that creates evil. Second - Evil != Dangerous. Dangerous is something that could inflict harm. Evil is something else entirely. I said dangerous, not evil. And yes, a tool can be dangerous, and the internet is one such tool. By your stretch of logic anything that can cause harm is inherently going to cause harm regardless of human action, you are being imprecise and quite silly. Third - I didn't say that the ability to cause harm equated to harm being done. I said Dangerous. Dangerous means the possibility of harm exists. Your own remarks indicate you agree the potential is there. My reasoning is meant to extend to almost anything. It is not a useless bit of information since instead of blaming the tool for existing, you blame the person which used it, whom you then analyze to see why they used it in such a manner instead of assuming because it the tool is what it is. Which then results in a clearer understand of human nature and society. Forth - Blame? (cough..cough) By identifying danger we identify the risk. We can work to lessen the danger (which is done). We can instruct users on how to mitigate the dangers (which is done). And we can respond to abuse when the worse occurs (which is done).
Deny the danger and it's game over.
Lets put it in a different context. You would argue that a gun is not dangerous. Only the drivers of cars on the road are dangerous. I would argue that guns are dangerous, teaching someone how to handle guns, good idea, because they are dangerous, when handled correctly, the danger is less, but not totally gone. You may feel free to insert "Table Saw", "Bathtub" and "Dildo" for "Gun" as the only change is amount of danger. The problem I have with the statement in question is that saying the internet (a non-living thing without intelligence or conscience) "can be a dangerous thing" quickly becomes the internet "is a dangerous thing". Fifth - The logical fallacy is yours. You make two false assumptions here, to add to the mass of false assumptions you have already made.
1: You assume that to be defines dangerous, the thing must be cognitive.
2: You assume that can be dangerous != is dangerous.
Apparently you need a little bit of help with the language:
Dangerous means (from Webster) "Able or likely to cause harm"
for example (also from Webster) "Ice was making the roads dangerous."
We should be able to agree that ice, in this sense, does not conform to your usage or objection (I haven't met any ice with an agenda.... Maybe you have).
I don't particularly care if you agree that Webster is a good source to cite or not. It is a respected resource. I have a reasonable expectation that my usage will be understood by the literate. Which now spreads and becomes "true" simply due to a contextual and logical error by the ill-informed. Now you have inserted irrational thoughts into a general populace which then spreads the same basic logic flaw to other tools.
If you think thats preposterous, then you should pay more attention to the world around you. You made an assertion that is false. That it is irrational to treat the internet as a dangerous thing. Yet, we see botnets, DoS, virii, spam, stalking, identity theft, etceteras, documented daily. There is nothing irrational about treating something dangerous as something dangerous.
What I think is preposterous is the whole "Evil" == "Dangerous" thing you are promoting.... Taking the stance that to be dangerous requires intelligence and then equating dangerous with evil (which really Does require a thinking being) was pretty preposterus all by itself. The rest of your remarks were icing on the cake.
Internet No Longer Dangerous != Fears overblown
/. would get that.. I'm sure there is some value in social networking sites for educational use, even though nothing comes to mind at the moment. But, the summation is wrong, the internet IS dangerous. I'm sure that, pulling stats out of my butt notwithstanding, fear of social networking sites IS overblown, but that does not mean the danger isn't there.
And
Internet != Social Networking
Geez, you'd think that a user on
When do I get to mod an Article "Stupid Summation"?
1. it isn't garbage and spaghetti because you have difficulty following the technique, there are a thousand ways to do anything. It's garbage and spaghetti when it doesn't work well, and when it's under documented.
2. Could you really write it in six months without referencing the code you are talking about? It's one thing to write code when the problems have been solved, quite another to solve the problems.
3. the scope of a job changes over time. For a new programmer, start looking for scope creep, it's a friend and an enemy.
4. code changes over time because languages change over time. Look for those situations in the spaghetti code where those guys that you are better than wrote functions that were not available in the language. You may get a surprise that they did something really elegant to overcome something missing in the language originally that exists now.
5. lets say that there were five programmers on the code before you, one after another. The first four might have been gods gift to programming, it only takes one pretentious newbie in the chain to really screw up pretty code.
certainly none of these apply to your project, but it's something to think about as you are exposed to projects in your career.
So If we get an infinite number of Humans, and have them type on an infinite number of Typewriters, We'll still have a season of crap on TV.......
Seriously, if you are going to chide someone for being condescending and pedantic, then just do it. Pointing out a common grammatical error or spelling mistake, or some other minor posting error makes you look like a complete ass who needs to justify your your commentary. Besides, it's potentially misleading as well; you seem to be indicating that his post would have been acceptable, if he spelled that one word correctly. That you went to the trouble to point it out at all indicates otherwise.
The article actually says that is the goal, I'm not exactly sure what you think you are pointing out here. When you look at the purpose of the system, it's to speed up the process of identifying suspects. In all reality it just means that people breaking the law will have a harder time slipping past the officer without being noticed. There are no new laws associated with this and there is nothing different then current police operations other then the fact it can be done at a much higher volume.
No, there is a critical difference between this new technology and the current practice elsewhere. The Law Enforcement professionals are not collecting a database of the location of a 90% of the vehicles in a given area and time. This isn't about Catching criminals or identifying stolen vehicles, those are good things. It's about tracking the movements of people who have NOT broken any laws. Simply put, If I'm not doing anything wrong, I want law enforcement personnel to keep their hands off of me and mine.
And the related "if I've done nothing wrong, I have nothing to hide." WRONG! I have a wallet. There is nothing illegal in it, I still don't want a stranger riffling through it. There is a nice love note from my wife in there, it's not even racy, but it does have sentimental value to me, and it's something only she and I share and it has value just for that reason.
First of all, burning an American flag is already illegal... not to mention a good way to get yourself injured/killed by patriotic citizens.
Are you stupid or misinformed? The fact that you don't know what the laws actually are in this country, in and of itself short circuits pretty much everything you assert about the laws in this country and the way LE does it's job, now doesn't it? Or, to put it simply, don't assert that something is true when it's not. Or at least pick an assertion that takes some effort to refute. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_desecration#Unit ed_States
Now, who decides what laws are asinine? You used the example of the American flag, only to then turn around and try to defend drug abuse. In my book, drug addicts are the most significant problem we deal with today in the country. In Oregon, according to the last article I read, 80% of all property crime in the state was methamphetamine related. Since we disagree, are drug laws asinine or not?
Well, the people SUBJECT to those laws are supposed to be the ones who determine, ultimately, if a law is asinine. the path here is to vote legislators in who will write, and repeal, the laws of the land to accommodate what the people want. the Justice department is supposed to determine whether or not the law has been violated, this includes, ultimately, if a law violates the supreme law of the land. It's been noted before, and will be again, that the constitution actually reserves all right to the citizenry except as the constitution expressly provides otherwise.
Contrary to your off the cuff remark, the most significant problem in this country today is that you don't control your own life, it's controlled by a lot of special interest groups that have more power in promoting and preventing legislation than the people who are to be governed do, simply because the will of the people is not responded to. I'm not going to pull statistics out of my butt, but I will use an example. It's pretty clear that a majority of the populace drank alcohol during prohibition, thus violating the law. Yet the law got passed by a combination of media and special interest lobbying across the country (it was an amendment to the Constitution, rather than a normal "Law"). That one rectified itself to a certain extent, with the repeal of that amendment. The thing about laws is this: it doesn't matter if they are "right", "wrong", "Moral" or "immoral". What matters is that the people give up power to government to gov
For a term to have meaning, it must have a scope and we must agree on the scope for it to be useful. I believe FUD has failed in both cases. The term developed scope creep (thus it had an ever widening scope) and it developed marketing spin (thus having no set meaning, and frequently wagged the dog, as it were) from the onset of popular usage.
I still try to use it on occasion. My preference is to either create FUD about FUD, or for it's humor value (come to think of it, that's redundant, sorry about that...).
Either the words don't exist to describe just how stupid these people are, or I'm too stupid to describe how stupid they are.
And the FOX reporters are worse! Why make a choice?
Other than it being one of the worst "spin" attempts I've seen, I have to admit, it was worth it for the amusement value. visions of a mob of geeks, derringers hidden in their pocket protectors.... Drive by shootings from late model Scooters.....
thanks, everyone, really cheered me up this morning.
Way to go, samzenpus. Slashdot, sigh. Not really, it said there is an inclination to become obese if you have obese friends and family. It didn't comment on the obvious - you tend to have the same activity level as those you associate with socially. the quick comparison is this, if your friends mountain bike, then you will likely do so. If your friends sit around the tv all day with donuts, you probably will do the same thing when you are with them. I don't believe there is any challenge to the idea that your activity level is associated with your level of obesity.
What annoys me about articles like this is that there is an implication, both by the title, and in the copy itself, that there is some sort of virus or bacteria causing the "Obesity Epidemic" - thus we focus on finding a "Cure" for the "Disease". You can argue that this social programming is contagious since it does seem to have a lot of lemming type behavior causing the problem. But perpetuating the "I'm fat because I'm infected" myth only allows people to shirk responsibility onto someone or something else. - And that is annoying, I don't think people take as much responsibility for their own actions as they should. And I think we focus too much on who is a fault, rather than finding a solution to a problem.
Uh, yeah. Count me skeptical.
Can anyone say "attention whore." "Cynical" is more like it..... But you are not the only one...
What all these "Marketing is cheaper than" comments seem to miss is that Testing is cheaper when the public will do it for free. It's a common mantra, and one not even remotely limited to MicroSoft.