They should have used Google Dog Alert. The scrambled version of the dogs, while disturbing, are not capable of tearing anything apart.

You're both wrong.
Don't confuse "Gambling" with the lottery. They're similar but different beasts.
Playing the lottery is a way to donate money to a cause with a small chance of being rewarded for being such a generous person (/end_huge_exaggeration).

Each lottery is different. Search google for "where do lottery proceeds go". For example, for PA:
http://www.palottery.state.pa....
62% -> winners
29% -> benefit programs
7% -> retailer and vendor commissions
2% -> operating expenses

The church I went to as a kid had a yearly festival, and a 50/50 raffle. 50% to the winner, and 50% to the church. I think that's an important distinction because, if you're ok with donating to that end result, then it doesn't feel bad at all to write off that $20 you just put in there. On the other hand, if the proceeds go to a casino, it's quite a stretch to think anyone is truly happy with the casino taking their money.

I'm not saying you should pick one beneficiary over another, but you make an educated decision, and the proceeds should be part of that decision.
Who do the proceeds go to when playing the market?

I was, somewhat sadly, more interested in that story than the judge one... how is putting a child into a 8'x6'x7' plywood box (aka. a room) a bad thing? I'm guessing there was other awful attributes left out for some reason, which would be just about as bad if the child was placed anywhere else (ex. resting on a 4"x2'x1/8" strip of rubber - aka a swing).

We have some crazy inventions which help deal with folks being in the middle of the road:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...
https://www.google.com/search?...

Maybe these haven't become common enough in Alaska yet, but in most parts of the world, you're a dumbass if your standing on the median while traffic is still flowing both ways (dumbass may be a little harsh, but you shouldn't be there).

Wow... so your solution to avoiding the common case of re-inventing the wheel and having "a mess of implementations of half-maintained half-abandoned libraries" is to... wait for it... use "custom in-house libraries"? Even worse, those will only do "what is required, nothing more, and won't cover special cases that you don't use" (at that time for that app).... so when you try to get all your various in-house incantations using the same incantation, you'll simply have to rewrite... well, everything. Good luck with that.

courtequdotbiz version 1:

courtequdotbiz version 2:

What are you saying then? Perhaps "decriminalized" and "legalized" got mixed up?

IMO, all drugs should be legalized and regulated. I feel the benefits of the latter part out weight the negative effects of the former. IE. you'll know what you're taking, its potency, it's strain info and effects, etc etc etc. In addition, rather than the government (and, by extension, all tax payers) spending LOADS of money trying to fight the war on drugs, they'll be able to make loads of money on taxing those drugs. It's not a perfect solution (ex. see cigarettes), but at least there's an influx of cash coming from the same product that will eventually cost the people money to support those users in recovery/sickness/etc (I dislike how tobacco tax is currently utilized, but it could be used as a wash and even a money maker). Legalizing all drugs would also shut down almost all of the related violent crime from dealers and distributors, and stop the flow of cash to countries we don't really want to support.

The biggest issue I see with legalizing drugs is how we deal with those that are currently incarcerated for possession or use. We could pretend that it's ok to think, "the rules changed; they broke the rules before; their breaking of the rules still happened and so they should see out their punishment". I have trouble with that, but I don't know how we'd handle adjusting the sentencing of hundreds of thousands of people.

[mods... feel free to offtopic this]

(disclaimer: I'm on slashdot so I didn't read the article or fully research this)

My initial reaction is that this is actually one of the first and greatest uses of social media and phone integration... assuming they're doing what I think they're doing (though, if so, there's some minor privacy leakage).

If I'm right, then this *should* work just as well around the world as long as people use facebook about as much in those places. I'm assuming, since this comes from their recently touted FB Messenger team, that:
* Messenger has your FB account (duh)
* Messenger permissions snag your personal phone number (MANY apps do this, or at least IMIE/etc)
* When you get a call, their app checks their DB of phone numbers (a great many of which have been verified via the app), and gets the lookup.
* If there's no lookup, it can then fallback to other lookups (whitepages, google, other DB's and such)

I really wish this was around a long time ago. The transition to everyone having unlisted phone numbers (ie. cell phones) destroyed a significant feature of Caller ID. This could bring that back a little. Though it's mostly going to be people I probably know already, this would be great any time you lose your address book somehow, and you can stop adding folks to your address book just so you'll know what number it is (ie. keeping your ex in there under some pseudonym just so you know not to answer when craycray2005 calls).

As far as privacy... if someone is calling me, screw their privacy. They can tell me who they are, or I'm not answering. BTW, if a creditor calls and says something like "Is this Mr So-and-So?", keep replying with stuff like, "Who can I say is calling?", "Who is this?", "Dunno, who are you calling for?". They love that. And definitely tell them that, "your call may be recorded for, wink-wink, quality control purposes on this end as well".

Anyway... I don't have a problem with this as long as it's simple phone number -> name lookup.

Agreed.
Maybe there will be certain neighborhoods that can be designed so this will work well, and they can be labeled as such and given drone priority shipping or something. I have trouble picturing any environment where this would work well, let alone better than a mailman (unless your particular mailman is especially poor at his job, but that's a different problem).

These things are cool and all that, but I don't see them being good for your case either. Just how far do you think they can travel with a big package? And how many of those deliveries can they make before their battery is dead? And how would that be more efficient than just driving that 1/4 mile? Your mailman just needs replaced.

On the other side of the scale, in tightly packed downtown areas, they're also virtually useless. You've got a bunch of people so close that it's a 10 - 20 foot walk between multi-family brownstones, or even residential buildings with LOTS AND LOTS of people (where you're going to be much better off carting in all the mail and stuffing into the already-centralized mailboxes).

The person you replied to is, IMO, in the most ideal location, and yet he'd still have lots of issues (where is that package going to go?).

This idea has such a small niche. It seems to me that the only reason anyone is interested is because it's like magic to them... they don't understand it, they didn't understand computers either, and they don't want to miss out (or they're making money off it, or huge RC nerds).

If you want to vote, you should get a job in politics/government, or offer your services to them for free (and hope they take allow you to contribute).
Gee, that's fun logic.

This knife comparison is fucking stupid.

There are hundreds of people walking around with laptops, and the laptops all passed through security with no reason not to pass them though.
There are how many people in the terminal with a knife? Few to none. How many people were allowed to bring one? None.

There isn't a very good analogy here. Shoe + threatening to kick people in the nuts? Water+towel and waterboarding threats?

The real point, IMO, is that, AFAICT, he was not threatening to do it. He was saying it was possible. The fact he had a laptop is almost meaningless (what about phone with wifi, or any wifi device, or some custom shit with custom radios etc... the latter of which would at least imply some possible intent). It may be a fine line, but there's a definite line.

Back to the (awful) knife analogy, at least make it right. He wasn't standing up and announcing to the plane, which would be inciting stuff; He mentioned it on twitter, which is casually mentioning it to your acquaintance that is sitting next to you that, "ya know, it'd be pretty easy to turn this plastic food tray into a sharp weapon and stab someone... I wonder why they use this type of tray?". Would they take his tray as evidence? Would they take every tray on the plane? WTF... there's plenty of laptops around, and they're just tools.

I have to agree. The experiment cited modified 30 articles with minor and cleverly-chosen falsehoods, and more than half were fixed within two months.

From that, Kohs then claims, "I think this has proved, beyond a reasonable doubt, that it's not fair to say Wikipedia is 'self-correcting.'"

Um, WTF? That statement proves he's not very good at making accurate statements. If he added a time period to that, and maybe some disclaimer about the popularity of articles being modified, then it wouldn't be much of a point, but it'd be closer to true.

Based on the experiment, it seems that, given enough time (ie. given sufficient time for users to review those items), it is fully self correcting.

IMO, the most important feature wikipedia has, beyond the raw data, is the history of edits. There were loads of mistakes in encyclopedias I used as a kid, and they continue to make updates to them year over year, but it's nigh impossible to check the history of a questionable or curious statement in one.

Adding to that, at any point when someone notices some falsehood that was added (and about 15 of the 30 tested were noticed), that editor could then search for all edits by that user, and check them or flag them. That may not happen every time, and some things may not be caught for a long time (especially made up articles about made up things that no one ever looks at), but it's ok... it's a living document.

Oh, and I have no problem with edits and contributions slowing down. That's good. That's usually a sign that something is approaching stability. We don't want violent amounts of change to factual reference material.

I think you're both kind of right.
My understanding of it is that churches are automatically classified as 501(c)3 nonprofit charitable organizations to the IRS, without having to apply.
There are also other differences. For example, there is a "parsonage exemption" (ie. ministers can deduct housing expenses from their federal income tax), and church property is generally tax exempt as well.

Others have also brought up the ban on church intervention to political campaigns. I think it's worth noting a couple other details to that:
* That's not just for churches. It covers tax-exempt charitable organizations (ie. 501(c)3) in general.
* There are allowances for pastors to campaign as individuals, and for churches to speak out on public issues (as long as it doesn't cross the line too far).

FWIW, if the law was changed so churches weren't automatically tax-exempt, but 501(c)3 remained, then most churches and religious organizations would be mostly unaffected. I suspect that would include Scientology (they already employ a diverse structure of for-profit and non-profit companies to manage their stuff, carefully treading the lines).

While I'd agree that it seems very likely he was cheating...

I think that would be closer to 1/2 up to 1/10 max. Most people go to the same stall every time they go. People into competitive things often repeat the same (unrelated to the sport) actions every time for superstitious reasons. All that said, why is anyone at that level allowed to take a bathroom break every 5 moves!?!? On the second one, that'd be suspicious enough.

They don't have to if they just say they found it there after the fact.
Before the fact, see the above... he was likely to come back to that stall anyway.

Why wouldn't it be? Hell, if I were planning on cheating, I would have got a waterproof phone and tossed it into the tank without any bag or anything. Wrapping it in TP and shoving it behind the tank isn't all that great a method.

Innocent until proven guilty should still be applied, though I'd certainly be more suspicious of him.

Agreed - if it's only been running 1/4 of a year, that's hardly soon enough to judge.

The main article is 4 paragraphs. 3 of those were smashed together into the slashdot "summary". How is that a summary of an article if it contains more than 75% of the article?

In addition, as someone else pointed out below, a few million divided by 76 jobs is about 26k/year. That's not bad by recruiting standards.
To top it off, they say they have "only invested a collective $1.7 million so far". Some of that has to be going back into taxes or the fun that the original few million came from, so that's gotta lower that figure (possibly down to as little as 1/4 million, or about 3k/job).

Where's the actual news?