The Current Events Thread

[Brekkjern]

Why is it that everyone here takes everything I say seriously when I don't and every time I need people to take things seriously, they don't... I just don't get it.

[Shad]

People don't expect a joking post in a relatively serious thread.

It's hard to detect sarcasm in text over the internet. It's also easy to say that it's the others that don't understand, not yourself that isn't clear enough. If people don't get your posts the way you wanted them to get it, you could just explain it, instead of immaturely saying "NOBODY UNDERSTANDS".

[Brekkjern]

And we could also be polite, but through your posting history to me, I am not expecting that anymore.

Yes, I could explain it as a joke, but that would really require people to ask if it was a joke or something along those lines instead of firing back with a broadside. My last post actually, bodaciously says I don't understand why people don't understand it. I am asking you why don't they understand? And more specifically, why don't YOU understand?

[Riku]

I have never seen Great Handsome Oppressor be rude to you sir. I have never seen anyone be rude to you aside from the one or two members for whom sporadic bursts of rage are relatively normal.

If someone asks you to explain something, then chances are it's not their fault that they didn't understand. If they just say "I dun get it", then there's about a 50/50 chance it was lack of explaining v. lack of listening. Verbal-based communication does not operate the same way in text as it does in person. you miss out on the visual and vocal cues that form the context of the words. As such, you sometimes have to use extra words in order to make up for these missing parts of the communication.

Now, onto the previous topic, it'll probably take too long to accomplish so that someone manages to block them off from it before the technology/method is sound.

[Shad]

There's some guy in France driving around and shooting people. He shot four guys that were in the military and killed three, and a few days later entered a Jewish school and killed three kids and a parent, and also injured another young man.

[adurumus]

War against who? The US government and Piratebay?

Do these people really have a military force set up to oppose a government or are they just talking out their booty?

I think the idea is that it takes a bit of commitment to do something about them. Even internationally, I'm pretty sure most governments prefer not to blow things up when it comes to criminals. At least some amount of tact is used, usually.

Might be another "raid dotcom's mansion" over again, though, and just blow airborne servers out of the sky.

[Syobon]

Maybe it's best

They don't mean an act of war in the legal sense.

It also wouldn't be difficult to find them.

What makes you say that? They can theoretically put these things anywhere in the world and at a height varying between 0 and a few kilometres and move them at will. It might be possible to locate them by tracing the signal, but I think it's possible to scramble and encrypt it to prevent that to an extent. They certainly wouldn't be impossible to trace, but if the government has to spend time tracking all these things down, that can give them time to put up new ones.

Because if they do this, then the scenario DnD mentions occurs. No one is going to stand for those things in their airspace. No government will waste time searching for every single one when they can instead have a completely valid and legal reason to bust down Piratebay's door and take the information on server locations they are guaranteed to have.

You have a point there, but you do assume that the government is going to know these servers even exists. Radar would indeed pick them up but there are relatively simple techniques to bypass that. At this point it's all just hypothetical, they're just looking at this as a possible alternate way to store their servers.

[Syobon]

Pirate Bay to team up with 5000+ artist for promotions.

[Lambeth]

There's also the issue of whether or not it violates federal law (wherever those things go) to put something up there, or so many things up there.

It would certainly violate federal law to shoot it down

[Falconer Lombard]

The MintChip Challenge: http://mintchipchallenge.com/

So Canada's getting rid of the penny this year. This got the ball rolling, the Royal Mint started asking,
"Why are we even using cheddar?"
Thus begins the MintChip Challenge, a software development contest where the winner is payed in pure gold from the mint. The idea is that the applicants are sent a dev kit (2 MintChips which are SRD cards that can be cheaply produced and some basic code/guidelines) and are left to invent the system.

Goals:
*Digitize Cash
*Make it easy to use
*Make it anonymous, don't tie it to bank accounts
*Make it secure
*Allow it to replace cash for the low-level, under $20 payments.

Some things they've included in thinking about:
*Make it loadable externally, this ties into the anonymity idea. Essentially they want it to work like the credit chips in Deus Ex, or something similar. Also so kids can use it.
*Use it online, the biggest failing of cash is that we can't buy things online with it, we need credit cards or debit cards. This prevents most children and teenagers from accessing a large portion of the current economy.
*Physical adaptability, from integrating it with phones or other electronic devices due to its standardized form.

What do you think of this initiative AZ?
I'm quite excited to see what might come about from this.

[FatOldRobot]

Sounds like a pretty good idea.

[Syobon]

It's not hard to see cash disappearing in the next 50 years or so, this looks like a cool project.

[D-vid]

Completely digitizing cash makes fraud easier though. That's something that has to be thought of before doing something like that.

I still have some pennies from Canada, will they be super valuable after the zombie apocalypse?

[FatOldRobot]

They'll be worth 1.25 bottlecaps.

[BurntToShreds]

So what do you guys think about the media circus surrounding the death of that Trayvon kid? I think that media companies need to stay away from these things, because their over-publicizing of these events could possibly lead to interference with the legal process. The companies reporting on the Trayvon case only care about ratings; they don't care about seeing the legal system do its work.

I wish that Americans would remember that under the US legal justice system, a person is innocent until proven guilty. Media companies tend to make people forget this, and often end up slanting the public opinion one way or another.