>Yes, that's how the whole world works. You really think it doesn't work that way on reddit?
Not really, no: Reddit has no "Anonymous Coward" moniker. Every user has a username, even if it's a "throwaway". It isn't quite so easy to tell these apart from the long-time users unless you're really familiar with peoples' names (or the username is something like
You can come up with a throwaway identity on almost any site.
You can, but it's easier to do in practice on some sites than on others. It's not that easy to do here on Slashdot; on Reddit it's almost trivial, and the RES makes it even easier to switch between identities with a couple of mouse clicks. Reddit doesn't require email confirmation and all that crap like (I believe) Slashdot and other sites do, which also causes them to limit you to one identity per email account. Yes, you can just go set up a bunch of one-time-use email accounts, but again that's a PITA, unless you're a professional troll and you have a semi-automated system set up for that.
As for Reddit and its gems/turds ratio, it really depends on the subreddit. They're all different, since they're run by different mods, with different rules, and different groups of people in them. It's not like Slashdot, where there's only one user community, and we pretty much all see the same articles; on Reddit, everyone sees a different version of the site, and sees different articles, depending on which subreddits they're subscribed to. With 250,000 subreddits, there really is not a singular "Reddit community", though there certainly are some subreddits which are extremely popular and might be considered somewhat representative. I can see all kinds of horrible posts in
The mods have nothing to lose by fucking up you site if you mess with them. They can move to a new site tomorrow.
Maybe if being a mod was a payed job you could tell them what to do.
If being a mod was a paid job, most likely the mods would not be trusted much, just like the (paid) admins are not right now. The only way communities like Reddit work is when the users don't see the people in charge as having a profit motive which overrides all sense of ethics and decency. This is why open-source software is usually trusted so much more than commercial software to not have malware embedded and to respect its users (with some exceptions of course, but these, like Gnome3, usually stem from philosophical disagreements, not suspicion that someone is screwing the users over for profit). No one but a fool trusts Adobe or various other commercial software providers to not include bloated spyware in their software to somehow make money on users (after charging them first for the product itself), but not many people distrust GIMP and think it's doing the same. They may disagree on some technical aspects of the software and its UI, but because software like this is made by a community of mostly volunteers and not a single for-profit corporation, it has a level of trust which commercial providers simply will never earn.
For a more relevant example, just look at this site: we even have a word for many "stories" posted here: "Slashvertisements". No one really trusts the leadership here any more, because it's obviously been hijacked by for-profit corporate interests, namely Dice Inc. Reddit appears to be going the same direction.
This would have been an OK thing to ask 10 years ago here. But these days, Slashdot is chock full of assholes, shills, right-wing extremists, and just trash in general. Very few worthwhile people are left here any more.
all the current refugees from there are bringing the stupid mindless liberal idiocy with them, trying to "Californicate" Nevada
Yes, because things like equal rights for black people is such a horrible concept. **rollseyes**
So you're one of those losers who wrecks their plane with their relatives in it because you have no experience and no ability to fly by instrument and get killed because you think you can fly by the seat of your pants.
People shouldn't even be allowed to fly with only a private license. If you can't fly at the standard of a commercial pilot, you have no business piloting an airplane.
New pilots' are always glued to the instruments, mature pilots eyes are focused outside except for quick scans of the instruments.
I guess you'll never be an instrument-rated pilot.
Exactly: is it better to have pop-ups from your nav system telling you when and where to turn, or is it better to fumble with a paper map, or drive around endlessly in circles lost, or pulling over and stopping constantly to ask some codger for inaccurate directions (and then getting lost again because the directions were bad)?
I like HUD, but I think that GPS-enabled cruise control (with camera backup) is the best way to handle avoiding excessive speed with technology. The hardware for that is in most cars now.
You can't use cruise control (of any kind) on most non-highway roads. If you're driving through town on a road with stoplights, cruise control is obviously not safe to use there. However, that may be a place that's a favorite spot for cops.
On a highway, you have a good point, but cops do not only issue speeding tickets on limited-access highways.
Downside on the latest one is it will display some radio information (station freq. or CD track number) when you make a change to the radio settings - they don't "stick" for very long. I suppose the idea is to keep the driver's eyes up rather than looking at the center stack for radio settings, but I could live without that info on the screen.
That's exactly the idea. It's better for you to get a quick update (esp. if you're actively adjusting the radio) on your HUD, rather than divert your attention to a different device on the dashboard that requires you to refocus your attention. If you're used to the vehicle and don't need the information, it should be easy for you to mentally ignore it.
I don't know about the OP, but my new Mazda3 has this feature as well. There's a HUD (it projects onto a piece of clear plastic that sits in the driver's view right on top of the instrument panel), and it also has a FOW (forward object warning) system which changes the HUD display to "BRAKE" with an alarm sound if it senses an impending collision.
The HUD itself I find very useful, because it doesn't require me to refocus my eyes much to see it, and has useful information: the current speed, the set speed for cruise control, if the cruise control detects a car ahead, what the following distance is set to, if lane-departure warnings are enabled, and arrows from the nav system telling me when to turn.
I can see how some people might think it's distracting to constantly see your speed like that, but that's a product of our idiotic insistence on arbitrary and overly-low speed limits with harsh penalties for violations. Instead of watching the road for dangers and generally driving safely at a speed we're comfortable with, we need to constantly compare our driving speed to the allowed speed and make sure we aren't going more than, say, 5mph over. Of course, on the highway you can set the cruise control and not worry about it so much, but on surface streets CC isn't such a great idea for obvious reasons, and those are also the roads where you're more likely to need to swerve or brake to avoid a collision. So to anyone complaining about this stuff being distracting, go complain to the cops about it, they're the reason for it.
How the fuck is someone supposed to move when they're in poverty and have no money to go anywhere? You are a fucking asinine asshole.
But back on topic, how is this facebook or google's problem? Facebook can't hire people that don't exist.
We've completely strayed from that topic in this sub-discussion, and are just talking about why things are the way they are.
You're absolutely right: FB, Google, etc. have little control over this stuff. To change it requires changing society in a big way, and it'll take decades for the changes to really bear fruit. These companies can't hire engineers who don't exist, and to create them would require getting to kids when they're really young and changing their environment.
-1 Stupid.
Being "racist" doesn't mean you're a white supremacist necessarily, it just means you treat people differently based on their race, and that you have certain assumptions about races.
It's a very common assumption in America today that blacks and hispanics are stupid and prone to joining gangs, and that Asians are smart and successful. So anyone operating under those assumptions is naturally going to treat black suspects poorly, and Asian suspects well. Of course, like many stereotypes, the statistics kinda back up these assumptions, but that's the problem with racism (or any generalization): just because a group of people exhibits certain behavior on average doesn't mean every individual in that group conforms to it. Some poor smart black kid in the ghetto who wants to go to college and study CS can be easily screwed over (by the cops, the schools, etc.) because he lives around a bunch of dumb thugs.
The woeful underperformance of AAs is because of historical inertia and ongoing racism that comes from it (such as people like you who make generalizations, and then everyone in that group is forever screwed because they can't overcome these generalizations). African immigrants don't have the same historical problems that AAs have; they leapfrog over those problems.
Think about it: suppose you can either be born a dumb white boy in a middle-class family, or a dumb black boy in a ghetto. Which lifetime is going to be better? As a dumb black boy, you'll probably end up joining a gang or getting involved in some other criminal pursuit because of your peers in that area, the lack of opportunities, etc. As a dumb white boy, you'll still go to a pretty decent school, get a diploma, your dad will probably help you find a decent job, etc. I knew a guy in high school who wasn't all that bright (he wasn't stupid really, but he wasn't scholastically smart, and got put into the lower-level classes for non-college-bound kids). His dad was really smart and an engineer, and set up a business for them to work on together, so when this guy graduated high school, he just continued the business (internet sales) and made really good money and bought himself a really nice upper-middle-class house; he never went to college or had to work in some shit job like someone else with his educational background. Some poor black kid would never have had an opportunity like that.
Black youth are given the same opportunities that every other youth is given. They can attend public school.
Oh please, this is a load of horse shit.
Public schools are not the same everywhere. That's exactly why they tried that whole "busing" scheme (which they're still doing in some places I believe). Schools are run at the local level, not the federal level, and are comprised of students from the local area, and teachers willing to work at that school, so schools in rich districts are good and well-funded, while schools in poor districts are full or problems and have terrible funding, and worse, good teachers don't want to work there because it's too dangerous. Yes, a lot of students in poor places aren't exactly great students and frequently engage in criminal behavior, but for those who would like to be good students, this is not a good environment for them, and it sure as hell isn't equivalent to the school environment in a rich district. A white student in an upper-middle-class district doesn't have to worry about peer pressure to join a gang or having good teachers and the academic credentials needed to pass the SAT and get into college.
"Look! There! Evil!.. pure and simple, total evil from the Eighth Dimension!" -- Buckaroo Banzai
