Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:I don't get it (Score 1) 183

The difference is that anonymity means they can still collect all your information, just not your identity.

There's no change in what Canonical collects. It's still the exact same spyware as before. Canonical merely says now that they'll try not to hand out your IP address to other people when they hand out your local searches.

-

Comment Re:ok, no worries then (Score 1) 347

You can add to that: objects which cost $22 to print.

The choice is:
(A) Keep printer materials on hand and use $22 worth of material to self-print the object now, or
(B) Waste $10 of my my time and $1 of gas heading to home depot to pay $9.99 for it.

It doesn't matter if it costs more to print something than it costs in a store. They're a lot of value in not having to run out to buy something.

-

Comment Re:Who? What? Huh? (Score 2) 62

It may be "getting reprinted all over the fuck", but I had blissfully managed to avoid seeing it.... until getting stabbed in the eye with it on Slashdot. Thanx.

I've been awake 5 minutes and already I've had a 100% Recommended Daily Allowance of pain, misery, cynicism, stupidity, scientific illiteracy, and media whoring.
Now I can't check cable news for today's update on the budget/Obamacare battle.

-

Comment The Lament of Smaller and Simpler Systems (Score 1) 335

The thing is, this new operating system will evolve like just about every other "we'll make it smaller and simpler" systems. If they are the next big thing, then sooner or later they'll go down the path of adding everything into their system that they ripped the other guys for having, then act like they invented it.

Comment Re:No, the little people don't have all the money (Score 1) 387

I actually read those other articles. There's no "Reliable source problem here".

The "healing" story looks to be perfectly valid research on a previously undiscovered mechanism that takes place in sterile fetal tissue. The tissue around the wound contracts, effectively contracting the size of the wound. Then other healing mechanisms kick in to fully close the wound. This isn't going to provide scar-free plastic surgery, at least not in the foreseeable future.

The Cosmology story, I'll start out by saying that when a headline says scientist says "x MAY y", I take that as a blatant tag that we're talking about a speculative new idea. I don't see a problem with a story on speculative science ideas when reported as speculative. It looks like some scientists wrote up an interesting new idea to explain the apparent acceleration of the expansion of the universe, and which appears to fit well with certain other observations. However as the article notes, there's a serious problem/hole in the theory. It was an interesting read, if you're into that sort of thing, but the hole in the theory is almost certainly going to turn out to be fatal.

Anyway, their claim is that, based on Zipf's law, there must be some "long tail" of unknown small financial institutions which have vast but uncounted assets. No way.

"No way" is right. That's not what it says at all.
They said that the collection of all companies follows Zipf's law, and they get the "shadow banking value" from the abnormally deflated HEAD of the curve, NOT the long tail.

They're not saying there's some "unknown small financial institutions which have vast but uncounted assets", they're saying the biggest corporations are underreporting. And it's a known fact that they are underreporting. They merely came up with a way to calculate the size of the known underreporting.

"It is in the nature of markets to move money from the many to the few."

That point is mentioned in the story, and it it is in fact a crucial part of how they obtained their result. The biggest corporations, the ones most closely engaged in working the money market itself, are vastly underreporting just how much they have worked the market to move ~100 Trillion dollars from the many to the few.

Examining the graph it looks like this figure is attributable, almost entirely, to the 16 largest corporations in the world. And if they are right about the size of these unreported assets, the underreported value is greater than the entire global GDP.

And another point jumps to my mind. Large corporations have been gaming the system to avoid taxes. Capturing even just ONE PERCENT of this figure would completely solve the entire US budget deficit. I realize that these are not exclusively US companies, but certainly much of this value is U.S. based. Capturing about 2.5% of this figure, spread across the relevant countries, would pretty much solve everyone's deficits.

-

Comment Re:Alternative ways to deal with bullying (Score 1) 706

To answer your curiosity of whay I encourage people looking at this approach, I'd be curious what your reactions to these three examples of the difference between two approaches to handling negative comments:
"Victim Proof School for Kids (part 2)"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_JVojbfNV0
"Victim Proof Your School for Teachers"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ei7CzlyPJTQ
"Golden Rule in the Workplace"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7j3GLS9aKo0

That said, nothing works everywhere. Still, Izzy Kalman says it is rare that physical violence among humans (at least related to schoolyard bullying) is not preceded by some kind of verbal escalation beforehand. If you can prevent the escalation, you probably can prevent the violence.

Anyway, it can be fun to try what Izzy demonstrates at home, He goes into more details on his CD and book, but basically, you get a friend, spouse, child whoever, and say you are going to play a game. The game is they are going to insult you and you are going to make them stop. If they stop, you win, If you give up, they win. The first time, try to disagree with them like he shows, getting upset, and so on. The second time, say it is OK if they think that, and so on, also like he illustrates. See which one they win and which one you win.

Note that as Izzy explains, you need to do these techniques 100% of the time, and you will still experience some teasing, showing, and so on. If you do them 95% of the time and get upset the other 5%, the cycle will continue because the bullying is being randomly reinforced (see operant conditioning).

Anyway, different things work in different environments. Sounds like you grew up in some tough situations. I could believe that what might work in most typical schools with typical bullying won't work in some with a certain kind of entrenched macho culture (without a lot of other changes).

Another relate video:
"Victim-proof your School demo"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Txz_BtJV_w

Maybe these techniques would not have worked for you. As Izzy says, when serious physical injuries are involved, you may need to do something else. But they may still work for most bully-victim relationships. One pilot study of that, but it still needs more validating research:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/files/attachments/2610/pilot-study-the-bullies-buddies-program.pdf

Slashdot Top Deals

With your bare hands?!?

Working...