Anyone who needed to have that explained to them is demonstrably resistant to facts and so-called "common sense" and is therefore a lost cause. Mass numbers of non-individuals agreeing with you bandwagon-style is the only thing they would find persuasive.

I don't dispute that. What I contend is that, while doing so, one should recognize that it amounts to viewing the world through the lens of one's own interests. Any decisions made are tempered by that knowledge.

It's a self-awareness beyond standard ego consciousness. It tends to make you truly ashamed of and prepared to abandon any sort of self-centered, exploitative motive.

It's one of those things that anyone is capable of doing, provided they really want to.

I don't know. There is something romantic about choosing to be a geek, against the grain, up the hill, against all odds and disincentives, doing it because you really want to and not because you were bribed into it. It shows great courage and spirit, which I believe is closer to what life is all about. The ones who "go with the flow" and do whatever is the path of least resistance are cowardly and hedonistic by comparison.

I would go so far as to say that you never truly reached adulthood until you can clearly and effortlessly distinguish objective, evidence-based reality from your own subjective feelings and opinions and wishes. Objectivity is when your own tastes and preferences do not influence your decision-making about anything important.

Until you can do that, life is a chaotic mess with no solutions except those that create more and more problems.

It's also the problem with alienation and dehumanization, not merely depression. Go out sometime and see for yourself, how rarely people talk to one another like fellow human beings. Usually they would rather talk at someone, listen poorly and keep interrupting (because they have no patience) even when they are listening to an answer to their own question, and generally can't relax and slow down and "take in" much of anything. The irony is, this rushed and hurried approach to life is so error-prone that they accomplish fewer of their goals than they would otherwise.

Compared to that, depression is just a particular special case, an instance of a much more widespread problem with the way we live.

Indeed. And "rules that require even more complexity in passwords" backfire because the notion of protecting people from themselves is fundamentally flawed. Note the way you practically never see this notion questioned in any headline or summary.

How will stop voting improve the situation?

Shachar

If you want to post on Slashdot just transfer to the JTRIG unit for Slashdot posting.

Even if it's legal to install the CA, it is almost certainly not legal to intercept the traffic (wiretapping laws etc).

So, probably illegal, but IANAL.

Shachar

No, that is not what everyone on slashdot are saying.

What we are saying is:

• Terrorism is extremely rare.
• People who brings a water bottle on board because they want to drink it are extremely common

So, to falsify the common slashdot knowledge, you'd have to show all of the following:

1. The plane was downed by a terrorist attack
2. The terrorists were not the passengers boarding with false passport (else traditional airport security was supposed to locate them),

3. and..

4. The terrorist were using some sophisticated water based bomb assembled on board, or smuggled stuff in their underwear.

Assuming 1 is true and the rest is false, pre-9/11 airport security was all it was supposed to take to prevent this plane from going down.

Shachar

Not Sherlock, but Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. The one who originally said "fire in a crowded theater".

Shachar

I don't think "we all" quite covers it.

TL;DR:
Holmes is often misquoted (more specifically, truncated). Holmes himself recanted that position later.

Shachar

It depends on whether the audience has the maturity to read about an event without automatically getting upset about it. Sadly, most Americans have been conditioned by repeated example to do the opposite. This is highly desirable from the standpoint of the media, because irritated emotions tend to shut down critical thinking.

It makes me wonder exactly when and how those rules got onto the law books, how they were sponsored, and what relationship the supporting politicians had with the major corporations of that time.

There are lots of ways to cheat that are legally legitimate.

With a motorcycle your main problem is the other drivers.

What you would discover (or be reminded of) is that average people don't put any thought or attention energy into anything that isn't directly in their selfish interests. George Carlin called it stupidity and consumerism, Erich Fromm called it alienation, I call it spiritual infancy. Regardless, that's the deal. The SUV driver doesn't see your little motorcycle as a threat and isn't likely to spend much time looking out for you (meanwhile they can't move out of the way fast enough for a merging tractor-trailer - see how that works?). You have far more to lose in such a collision.

If you actually talk to motorcycle riders (at least in the US) you'll hear the same thing over and over.