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Comment: Re:Fascists (Score 1) 110

by causality (#46501707) Attached to: UK Government Wants "Unsavory" Web Content To Be Removed

In other news, most of Britain wants the UK Government to be removed and replaced by people who are not asshats. Unfortunately, it turns out that nobody who is not an asshat can be persuaded to want the job.

In yet other news ... here's an idea! If you are concerned about propaganda causing your citizens to become "radicalized", why not take the most effective steps possible to prevent that? Create the most sane, free, reasonably run society in which civil rights are sacrosanct, all of the laws are sensible, and all of the laws are equally enforced.

You'll find that far fewer of the citizens would ever want to do anything to oppose that. It's more effective than playing whack-a-mole with an ever-growing list of terrorists.

Comment: Re:I'll make it easy (Score 2) 91

by flyingsquid (#46501589) Attached to: US Navy Strategists Have a Long History of Finding the Lost

The most likely scenario is suicide. It's hard to imagine, but it's happened twice- SilkAir Flight 185 and EgyptAir 990. I don't think there is one case of someone stealing a commercial aircraft, just because there's no way to sell it. It's not a Honda Accord you can sell for cash or strip for parts; it's now the most famous plane in the world and you'll have as much success selling it as you would have selling a stolen Mona Lisa. And the parts have serial numbers.

No other scenario make sense. If the plane was hijacked for a terrorist plot, it should have turned up. Plots like 9/11 rely on the element of surprise, so you need to strike as quickly as possible, instead of giving the authorities an entire week to track you down. Similarly, if the plane and passengers were taken hostage, this would have been announced by now. If your hostage-takers are politically motivated, parading hostages on TV advances their cause; if they're just after money, they need to open negotations. Either way, we should have heard .

It all points to pilot suicide. That raises the question of why the pilot would fly on for hours instead of just nosediving into the ocean, but by definition pilot suicide isn't the act of a rational mind. It suggests not a desire to end one's own suffering but to inflict suffering on others and a complete disregard for human life- in other words, a sociopathic mindset. Eric Harris- the sociopath behind the Columbine killers- comes to mind here. He wanted to end his own life but also to take as many people as possible with him, and get as much attention as possible in it. Some careers attract this kind of person- lawyers, CEOs and surgeons are often sociopaths- and being a pilot may be one of those. You probably find that flying induces anxiety, now imagine that you not only have to worry about the anxiety of flying, but have to actually take responsibility for the safety of the airplane itself and several hundred lives... most normal people wouldn't enjoy that. Sociopaths have no anxiety, and actively enjoy control over and manipulating other people, personality characteristics that would make them a natural for the job.

Comment: Software freedom > "fast" and "not bloated" (Score 2) 177

by jbn-o (#46499547) Attached to: Firefox Was the Most Attacked &amp; Exploited Browser At Pwn2own 2014

At least Firefox can be altered to become what you want it to be because Firefox respect's a users software freedom. Far more important than vagaries like "fast" and "not bloated" is how a program treats its users. Proprietary browsers leave users no opportunity for improving the program. Thus security issues in proprietary programs go unfixed and are exploited for years. This, in turn, allows others to invade people's computers and leaves users helpless. This is exactly what happened with Apple's iTunes for over 3 years. I would not be surprised to learn that software proprietors including Microsoft, Google, and Apple are doing similar things with proprietary web browser programs as well.

So while I like trustworthy programs like other computer users, I know that I can't ascertain the trustworthiness of proprietary programs like Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Apple's Safari, and Google's Chrome. The extent to which any of them are built from software that respects my software freedom is irrelevant because proprietary programs and their updates are essentially black boxes. I can't possibly inspect or fix all of the software I use, but I can put myself in a position where I stand to benefit from the improvements a lot of programmers make by exclusively running software that respects my freedom to run, inspect, share, and modify—free software—freedoms I value in their own right.

Comment: Re:I RTFA. Gibberish. (Score 4, Informative) 214

by hey! (#46499351) Attached to: Transhumanist Children's Book Argues, "Death Is Wrong"

Science fiction author "Gennady Stolyarov" isn't listed in Internet Speculative Fiction Database either, and the book's publisher, "Rational Argumentator Press" has a grand total of *one* publication, and its web presence is a section of Mr. Stolyarov's personal site. So what we're dealing with here is the self-published work by an unpublished crank sci-fi author -- not that there's any dishonor in being an unpublished crank sci-fi author. There's lots of us around.

I peeked inside the book, and what strikes me is that if you squint, this *looks* like a religious tract pitched toward children, right down to the colorful but stiff illustrations. Take a look at the cover, with it's child dressed in a blue oxford shirt, red tie and khaki chinos banishing death. This is peculiar, in a way that I applaud; an image pitched at children by someone so far out of the mainstream that she has no idea what a culturally "normal" child looks like. That's a good thing for the world, although it may not do much for the author's message. It's more important for people with an oddball streak to write books than people who think like everyone else.

This book appears to come out of the same impetus that underlies a lot of religious impulse: rage at the fact we're are going to die. It's a fact we *should* be uncomfortable with. Religion does the most damage when it makes us too comfortable with the prospect of death. The afterlife becomes a make-up session where we can do the things we put off line life like reconciling with estranged loved ones.

Anyone who regards speculation about technological singularity enabling indefinite human life extension as a "promise" is taking far too much comfort in what is, at best, an intriguing idea. But the universe itself has a finite lifespan; any being who could last to the heat death of the universe, or even a single 2 million century "galactic year" would be so far from human that calling it "transhuman" would be like calling ourselves "transprotozoans".

Whether we just disappear after a mere century or so, or survive as something unrecognizable as human, our opportunity to experience the universe as ourselves, as humans, is brief. We should make the most of it, no matter what we plan to leave behind when our human existence is done.

Comment: Re:Just like where I work ... (Score 1) 168

Exactly. If no one bids on anything (because the consequences are too grave), then the government will be forced to change its procurement procedures. Doing things the way they're working now obviously isn't working, and the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing and expect a different result, yet that's exactly what most people seem to want to do.

Comment: Re:Don't be too sure of yourself. (Score 2) 213

by flyingsquid (#46498371) Attached to: The Billionaires Privatizing American Science
If you don't believe that the government should support research and technology, why do you still use the internet and the web- which were both developed with public funding by DARPA and CERN, respectively? This is the classic hypocrisy of libertarians- when it comes time to pay they claim it's a form of theft, but they have no problem with using all the public services- roads, universities, the internet- that have been paid for with my tax dollars. They're happy to take government services, they just don't want to pay for them. If their house catches on fire, they're going to call 911 just like everyone else.

Comment: Yes. (Score 2, Insightful) 177




Comment: Conditions of instability: (Score 2, Informative) 177

Firefox is unstable when many windows and tabs are open, even when using NoScript, Adblock, and Ghostery, as mentioned above.

Many crashes do not start the Crash Reporter.

See for yourself. Go to this URL:
(Mozilla does not allow links from Slashdot.)
Those are NOT ALL the crashes! Those are just the crashes that don't also crash the Crash Reporter.

The earlier version, 26.0 is crashy, also:

Comment: Firefox is the most unstable program in common use (Score 0) 177

Firefox is the most unstable program in common use when many windows and tabs are open. The latest version is far more unstable and crashy that earlier versions.

Firefox gets more than $100 million from Google each year. Where does the money go? Do you see that amount of development each year?

The Mozilla Foundation stopped doing more than minimal work on Thunderbird.

The Firefox instability was first reported before version 1 was released.

Comment: Re:Three thoughts... (Score 1) 418

by flyingsquid (#46495129) Attached to: Malaysian Flight Disappearance 'Deliberate'
The system already exists; FLYHT Aerospace based out of Calgary sells it for around $100,000. There's been a push for this kind of technology following the loss of Air France 447, when it took almost two years to recover the black boxes and figure out what happened. Warren Buffett's Netjets started installing this technology in 2012 but the larger carriers have been slow to adopt. Presumably after this latest disaster, it will become standard- either the big companies will realize the advantages of being able to track their planes, or governments will make this technology mandatory. It might not have been enough to avert the disaster, but it would have spared a week (or however long it ultimately takes) to find the plane and figure out what happened.
