Are we sure this was anonymous? Maybe this was a message from the Legion guy from the Geth. Clearly, he's leveled up recently in his AI hacking skills.

Let's see, shooting a shotgun (or any gun for that matter) at objects located in the air above your house..what could go wrong? Why doesn't it surprise me that this NRA-like solution seems like a good idea to those that would actually follow through with it?

So I click on the comments. Initially there's some worry when I see the space for the video. "Uh oh, is that gonna autoplay?" I think. But the worry goes away and it's peace and tranquility when I see the acute triangle embedded within the image. "Ah, it's not going to autoplay. It's waiting for my prompt to start the video". But after about a second, the not-so-cute triangle goes away, and the video starts autoplaying! ARRGHHH! But wait, there's more! If you're fortunate enough to see the ad before the video, then you won't even get an option to pause that ad OR disable the audio! You'll pretty much have to kill your tab or browser to kill the sound. Fantastic for those of you at work that have your audio turned up that thought slashdot was safe to browse without bringing attention to your cubicle-mates

As a software tester of sorts, I'd like to believe that the delay between the page load and video autoplay is just some poor programming or latency issue or something technical in nature. But I'm almost positive that some spawn of Satan was on the design team here and thought "Hey, I got a great idea! Instead of just starting the video right away like other click bait sites or waiting for the user to manually start the video (crazy! right?), we'll put a still image in there for a second and a play button. Then right about the time the user scrolls down to the comments past the video, we'll autoplay the video without giving them any option to pause or mute the ad that comes up!"

Now excuse me while I email youtube to tell them about how great their embedded ads are in their videos

I know it might suck that drugs can't be easily bought online now, but you can't take the good (recreational drugs) without the bad (CP, hiring a hitman, illegal weapons, slavery). You don't get to have a version of silk road on a darknet where you pick and choose the services; it's all or nothing. In my opinion, the world is much better off without an outlet for illegal transactions; because most of the transactions contribute to a massive net loss for humanity.

"+ 3 Insightful"

Really? Has your lawn been horribly trampled by kids lately? There's so much good stuff out there I don't even know where to begin. We're in a golden era of music choice and availability. Not only do we have a plethora of different types and combinations of sounds and rhythms that are available for the mixing (mostly due to electronic music and computers), but this generation has the ability to find any music from anywhere now - thanks to the internet you can find all kinds of obscure stuff from another corner of the world. You have millions of artists to choose from anywhere now - maybe it's your perception bias making you think it's off (because when you walked into a CD / record store 20-30 years ago, they tend to carry only the best material, and you don't have to wade through crap).

Maybe you meant to say "I don't like the top 40 stuff they constantly repeat on the radio or at sporting events or at the bars". Newsflash: every generation thinks their parents' music was lame, but my generation's music was the greatest ever, but my kids listen to complete shit. Talk to a 30-something and they'll think Pearl Jam or Nirvana were the greatest. Talk to a 60-something and they'll think Zeppelin and Queen were the greatest. Talk to a teenager now and they'll think Katy Perry or Taylor Swift are the best evar! Maybe this has to do more with the music you listed to as a teenager shaping your musical tastes (and associating good times with that music).

Pretty much nailed it there. Music is easily available through enough other sources that I don't need to pirate it to listen to the song i want. I can stream it on youtube or grooveshark and not pay anything, or just buy it for much less (easier to justify forking out a dollar for a song you can play an infinite number of number, instead of a movie you'll likely watch once), and there's no waiting period for a song once it's been released. If I want to see a movie that's out, it's easier to pirate it than drag myself to a theatre and pay 10 bucks or more.

Those are good points on GMOs causing potential environmental problems, but the question presented in TFA was actually "Safe to eat genetically modified foods". The summary here is a bit misleading ("37 percent of the public said GMOs were safe"). I think if you reworded the question to something like "Is there an environmental risk with GMOs?" then we'd get a higher percentage of scientists agreeing with that statement (as vague as it is, what qualifies as a risk?)

If the school suspects some form of bullying, then shouldn't the victim be able to log on themselves and simply demonstrate the instances of cyber-bullying? No one needs to disclose passwords to anyone to prove cyber-bullying.

I'm pretty sure this violates the TOS on facebook or any other social media, since they specifically say not to disclose your password to anyone. They have no legal ground to stand on.

I imagine these flags wouldn't apply to the links themselves; we wouldn't see any sort of count based on the total number of false flags for the link or article itself. This would probably be something relative to the context or area where it's being posted. Something posted on someone's wall for instance, would only be flaggable by those that could see the wall post (friends only). A link posted in a FB group would only be flaggable by members of the groups.

To get around shills, they'd probably have to identify the users disagreeing with a link or article (if you think that's false, well then don't be afraid to stand behind your decision!). If some shill keeps flagging opinionated or factual articles as false - then users would get some sort of option to ignore all of their false flags (similar to the way you can ignore game invite requests from specific people). Maybe user accounts that continually flag articles as false would be banned from making flags; this would deal with trolls as well

Cmon mods, let's get the title right at least. Is that supposed to be Why Africa needs to fight ebola? Or is there some missing punctuation? "What Africa really needs to fight - Ebola". Or maybe this was submitted by Norm Macdonald, in which case it might be "What, Africa really needs to fight Ebola?"

I mentioned this earlier in this thread too, but I think this is more of a Prisoner's Dilemma scenario than Streisand effect. But with more than 2 participants. You're certainly correct otherwise though;

If the vast majority of papers (> 80%) published the cartoons, then it sends a clear message that terrorism does nothing (or very little) to deter printing blasphemous content. Terrorists will be deterred from bombing or shooting up publishers and cartoonists, since backing up a threat of death *still* didn't deter these papers from publishing, and now they're less inclined to publish in the future.

If none of the papers, or very little (less than 10%) published the cartoons, then it sends a clear message that threats of death work, because most of the papers declined to print potentially offensive material. This reinforces the notion that death threats do work when carried out. But this also puts greater risk on the few places that do publish, because now there's less targets to choose from.

Choosing not to publish the cartoon is the best decision as the individual organization, but the worst decision for the greater good (assuming "greater good" means less terrorism and greater freedom of speech).

I know it's really easy to just lambast the publishers as cowards for refusing to publish the cartoons (as you post anonymously or semi-anonymously on slashdot, you brave soul), but it's not an easy choice to make. It's been clearly demonstrated that by publishing mohammed cartoons, there's a non-zero chance that some nut-job will break into your building and murder a bunch of your staff. Are you as an editor willing to take that chance? Are you willing to put your staff at risk, even for a minimal chance of violence against your station? It's sooooo easy to criticize them for not publishing offensive cartoon, but I really doubt that the majority of you would post a crude drawing of mohammed on your facebook accounts, or drop off a few thousand copies of an offensive cartoon in your neighborhood mailboxes (with your personal address listed). Because then you're truly willing to take the same upon the same risk that these cartoonists (and their publishers) take.

From a litigation standpoint alone, is it worth publishing an offensive cartoon? Probably not if you're in a litigious friendly nation. If you're the editor, and if some shit goes down, and there's the slightest possibility your organization could be held liable for the deaths of your staff because you totally *knew* this could happen, and could have avoided it by not publishing the offensive article - you bet your ass they'll get sued by the families of the victims. That risk probably isn't worth whatever benefit they get for being more ballsy in the eyes of the viewer. The editors know this and factor this in their decision making.

Whether to publish or not is more of a Prisoner's dilemma than it is Streisand effect as mentioned elsewhere in the comments here, except with more than 2 "prisoners" (publishers - assume not publishing is equivalent to testifying in the analogy). The better move for yourself is to not publish and have no risk. But the better move for the collective is to publish. If all the publishers decided to publish, that would be the greatest overall benefit for freedom of speech, because it demonstrates they're not afraid of terrorism. It also minimizes the risk for each publisher, because terrorists don't have the resources to target all of the publishers in existence. They might even give up completely, realizing there's too many people offending their religion. But if nobody publishes cartoons out of fear, it reinforces the idea that threats of violence work (and the censored SouthPark scene in the "I learned something today" segment is true). If only handful of publishers decide to publish offensive mohammed cartoons, then it still reinforces the idea that threats of violence work (because most publishers aren't doing it, clearly because they're afraid of terrorism), AND it puts these few publishers at a much greater risk of terrorism. It fucking sucks, but the only way this is going to work is if a large majority of publishers decide to print these cartoons as a response.

Because alcohol gives you boosted levels of confidence (Of course I can still drive, I'm fine!!). Marijuana certainly does not (if it increases anything, it's paranoia).

IMO, both of these substances will reduce your reaction time and potentially impair driving. But alcohol is far more dangerous because it impairs your driving *and* increases confidence. Marijuana reduces your confidence. The drunk driver is going 20 over the limit, the stoned driver is going 10 under. So it's not necessarily an equal comparison, and perhaps driving under the influence of alcohol should warrant a more severe penalty.

A little of column A, a little of column B. The Sarkeesian ordeal and backlash there is a good example of showing how much hatred and vitriol was out there for simply having an idea, or having a kick starter heavily exceed expectations. Sure, there's a lot of BS in her videos and either she has no idea what she's talking about - or she's being intellectually dishonest about the topics there. But the amount of hate spewed before that first video was made is a good indicator of how well feminism fits in with hardcore gamers.

But back to gamergate; it's basically one big case of "You're not technically wrong, outraged gamers. You're just assholes." Even if she did sleep with some people for favorable reviews (sorry, previews), then whoop de doo. It was for a game about depression, and it was a text-based game, and it was free. That excludes about 99.999% gamers from any interest right there. And it wasn't even for a review, it was more of an "honorable mention" in a site with a list of a bunch of other free games.

So yeah, it's not so much just "A person cheated at business, and the community around that business called out the cheater". It's that collectively, the gaming community gave way too many shits about the whole thing. Which is why it was so easy to label this as misogyny by the other side, and why they attempted to quell the whole thing. As if gaming journalism was already some holy sacred cow that was now tainted because of the ordeal (Kane and Lynch, anyone?). A great quote from the Colbert-Sarkeesian interview was something like "no... but it's about gaming journalism! This is important! Could you imagine if Hollywood journalism had no ethics?"

This is remarkably similar to the Lisa Lionheart episode of The Simpsons, specifically the scene where the one female executive is seen heading into the board room full of white dudes (who begin catcalling as she closes the door with her tush). There's even one woman on that corporate list!