Cariset - Slashdot User

Comment Re: Hardly news.. (Score 2) 89

by Cariset on Sunday August 28, 2016 @06:08PM (#52786515) Attached to: New Ransomware Poses As A Windows Update

It's Kipling's law of the jungle, which reads the same forward and back:
"the pack is the strength of the wolf, and the wolf is the strength of the pack."

I think it's analogous to how we Earthlings don't just rely on abstract logic to reproduce our genes, but instead have strong, inbuilt, irrational urges that drag us in that direction whether our reason think it wise or not. We can work around it, we can rationalize our actions, but it's still lurking the in the bottoms of our brains.

Having a tribe that will join together to defend you is a huge deterrent to an attacker. Unless the atracker can manage to isolate their target and sever their social bonds. (E.g., abusive relationships, and the discussion of slavery in "Debt: the first 5000 years".)

Them's my two cents, anyway. :-)

Comment Do this again next year! (Score 1) 261

by Cariset on Tuesday April 02, 2013 @02:28PM (#43340249) Attached to: A New Benefit For Logged-In Readers: Meet Slashdot's ROT13 Initiative

This was great! With one odd exception, it told me exactly which stories were April Fools' jokes, and let me ignore them when I wanted, and laugh at them when I wanted. Please do this again every year! (But yes, you may want to triple the encryption strength...)

French President Proposes Jail For Terrorist Website Visitors 402

Posted by Soulskill on Friday March 23, 2012 @09:32AM from the if-it-quacks-like-a-terrorist dept.

howardd21 writes "French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who is only a month away from an election, argued that it is time to treat those who browse extremist websites the same way as those who consume child pornography. 'Anyone who regularly consults Internet sites which promote terror or hatred or violence will be sentenced to prison,' he told a campaign rally in Strasbourg, in eastern France. 'Don't tell me it's not possible. What is possible for pedophiles should be possible for trainee terrorists and their supporters, too.' Is this a good move for security, or just another step towards a totalitarian society that prohibits free expression?"

Cheap Solar Panels Made With An Ion Cannon 395

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday March 13, 2012 @03:04PM from the fresh-from-the-daystrom-institute dept.

MrSeb writes "Twin Creeks, a solar power startup that emerged from hiding today, has developed a way of creating photovoltaic cells that are half the price of today's cheapest cells, and thus within reach of challenging the fossil fuel hegemony. As it stands, almost every solar panel is made by slicing a 200-micrometer-thick (0.2mm) wafer from a block of crystalline silicon. You then add some electrodes, cover it in protective glass, and leave it in a sunny area to generate electricity through the photovoltaic effect. There are two problems with this approach: Much in the same way that sawdust is produced when you slice wood, almost half of the silicon block is wasted when it's cut into 200-micrometer slices; and second, the panels would still function just as well if they were thinner than 200 micrometers, but silicon is brittle and prone to cracking if it's too thin. Using a hydrogen ion particle accelerator, Twin Creeks has managed to create very thin (20-micrometer), flexible photovoltaic cells that can be produced for just 40 cents per watt; around half the cost of conventional solar cells, and a price point that encroaches on standard, mostly-hydrocarbon-derived grid power."

Televised RIAA Hearing Adjourned, Briefs Scheduled 72

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday January 23, 2009 @07:15PM from the embarrassed-of-your-job dept.

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "After the lower court adjourned the hearing scheduled to be televised in SONY BMG Music v. Tenenbaum, in order to give the appeals court time to determine the RIAA's petition for a writ of 'mandamus or prohibition', the appeals court set a briefing schedule. Apparently expecting amicus curiae briefs to be submitted, the appellate court set January 29th as a deadline for filing of amicus briefs. One commentator opines that 'the last thing Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony BMG RIAA attack lawyers want is for people to see them live and in full, glorious color', while another noted Judge Gertner's observation that the arguments raised by the RIAA in the appeals court, relating to the manner of administering the broadcast, had never been raised in the lower court."

Comment Re:What's the difference? (Score 1) 425

by Cariset on Monday June 05, 2000 @01:38PM (#1025327) Attached to: Criminal Libel and the Net

He vented on the web. What's wrong with that? Are we going to take away all mechanisms for dealing with stress that people have and let them explode and commit suicide or mass homicide?

No. We'll just keep prodding them until they start making noises about lashing out, and then remove them quietly, so we don't disturb any of the normal students.

The most frightening quote I saw in the article was this one, by Principal Schofield:

"Columbine was a definite worry," he says. "If you disenfranchise somebody to the point where you become their enemy or their classmates become the enemy, then you want to remove them. Columbine did come up. Parents didn't want to send their kids to school until he was removed."

This just gets scarier and scarier the more I think about it. It's the same sort of attitude that slaveowners had in the Old South - they prodded the slaves to weed out any signs of rebellion. The instant anyone began to stand up for themselves, they were killed.

It's also the attitude taken by bad manufacturers - if there's a problem with one of their processes, and it turns out a faulty product every so often, they don't fix their process. They just discard the faulty product and keep right on going, as it's too much of a bother to actually fix their problem.

Just another argument for "schools == assembly-line factories", I guess...

Cariset

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