opiumden

If you're running zip from the command line, try setting the priority with 'nice' when you run it. That should allow you to continue using your system while zip crunches away in the background. If you forget to set the priority level at runtime, use 'renice' to set the priority level of a running process.

Wait, hold on. I want this to come across as respectfully as possible -- I'm not attacking you personally -- but I believe you're falling into the very trap the author of the article is trying to point out. Namely, "... it’s just the solitary naked individual and the gigantic and menacing state."

You construct a scenario with two choices: "those dang kids" and "system itself grown evil"

Well, the first one works to highlight absurdity because "dang kids" isn't a homogeneous group all working towards a coherent end. There's a lot of dang kids around and a lot of them hold different conflicting beliefs and are working towards different conflicting goals.

But the "system itself" isn't a homogeneous group working towards a coherent end either. The "system" is a giant, confused, messy, bureaucracy that doesn't get together Thursday nights for bowling, evil and 10 cent wings. That's why, behind communication intercepts, our favorite topic to bitch about is govt inefficiency and waste.

I don't necessarily agree with the article and I'm not saying that there aren't valid criticisms of the system (giant, confused, messy, bureaucratic) or even of parts of the system (NSA being evil and the President being complicit in that evil).

But if we're going to call the NSA's mass surveillance evil (about which I won't argue), then I'd hazard to say that part of that "evil" is the paternalistic nature of this idea that in order to save our freedom (from TERROR!) we must give up that freedom (to BIG DATA!). In other words, someone else knows what's best.

So we need to be careful that, in fighting this idea that the govt knows best so just trust them to do the right thing for all of us, we don't turn into that govt. You write "Or has the system itself grown evil enough that people view their obligation to their fellow citizen more important than their obligation to the structures created by those citizens?"

If citizens are more concerned with -- and name your own whipping boy here: Reality TV, facebook, buying a new car / bigger house, getting fatter, getting hawter, whatevs -- and they vote in leaders who perpetuate these acts then in a sense we all get what they deserve. It's not fair but it's the nature of living in a society.

Awkward sentence construction aside, you can't save people from themselves. Doing so, in this case, makes you the thing you're fighting. And I think that's what the author in the NYT was saying. It's dangerous to start thinking "I know better than the system" because the person has now internalized some very dangerous assumptions. He no longer sees the world as a place filled with people. He sees the world in very stark, black and white, him vs the system, terms. And the rest of us, we're part of the system (that is, vs him). That kind of thinking leads to some very, very bad places but I'll save that for a different tl;dr comment.

And I hope that doesn't come across as an attack on you. I don't know that I agree or disagree with your comment in it's entirety but you made an interesting generalization from a very specific thing and that's what I was reacting to.

I have junkie friends. I also have alcoholic friends. The winner of the "who is more fucked up" medal goes to those without a good support system or those whose underlying issues / mental illness / pathology are harder to treat. Spend enough time around addicts and you realize the drug of choice doesn't matter. I knew a girl in rehab who was a compulsive shopper. I didn't even realize that was a thing but there's a fancy word for it and everything: Oniomania.

This comment is making me realize that I have a lot of fucked up friends.

Anyway, I'm fighting an anecdote with an anecdote but the most harmful thing about addiction is getting thrown in jail, getting jail marked down on your permanent record, being afraid to ask for help (or help being unavailable) because Johnny Law is getting tough on crime. The substance doesn't matter.

I'd say disconnected from reality. I found this on the "A New Beginning" post.

"I propose to put myself on top of that new hierarchy. I am a very good guide and councellor. I lift up instead of suppressing. I also know my limits (if there are any). I attack people, but only when necessary. After the change is done, there will be no more need for that."

Talented coder or not, this is someone in a lot of pain suffering some type of mental illness. My diagnose-over-the-internet license is only valid for the continental United States so I'll spare you the medical mumbo-jumbo but the persecution of seeing evil everywhere, the grandiose feelings of entitlement, the inability to function ... I'm afraid that living in a van down by the river isn't even close to rock bottom for this guy.

I feel sorry for him too, the world is a scary and nonsensical place when you can't trust your brain.

We're quickly approaching that insane point in this discussion where we're now forensically dissecting what appears, to me at least, to be a throwaway comment by zalew. If zalew meant the comment to be a deep critique about the intersection between age and vocal fan boy-ism then I've missed that.

I don't see the comment as ageism. I see the comment as constructing a strawman in order to point out that the more vocal proponents a new technology has, the more attention and interest it can draw on a site like hackernews. It's a subset of the problem that on the internet, in front of an anonymous audience, points of view (or arguments) that are forcefully presented and appear to be logically consistent can often beat out points of view (or arguments) that are less well reasoned and less forcefully presented, even if they are more factually correct.

Thus 'python is dying' becomes a thing because it doesn't have the same level of noise surrounding it as other technologies. The lack of noise doesn't mean python is dying, it means python is less noisy (whatever that actually means).

But to get back to the point I was trying to make. The comment doesn't really say anything about being 19. Sure attach an 'immature' or a 'lacks experience' and now we're trending towards stereotypes that could imply ageism. Same as if zalew had said "a 56 year old condescending, out of touch, past their prime, vocal grandfather of two, great grandfather of 6, fan boy."

But simply sticking 19 next to some other words doesn't automatically imply ageism. And anyway I was reacting to ElliotH's need to defend himself from the characterization made in the strawman argument. If you want to go around fighting all things ageism that's your right and you're welcome to do it. But to spend time fighting strawmen, well, that seems a bit ridiculous. Although, at this point no more ridiculous than the amount of time and effort I've put into this reply. So I guess we're all suffering from the same thing this morning. Must be something in the company coffee.

The poster didn't say "every 19 year old is a vocal fan boy who posts 4 times a day"

The poster said that there are some 19 year olds who are very vocal about their fanaticism and who post 4 times a day.

It's not ageism because it's not generalized to an entire group of people. So if you don't recognize yourself in the comment, it's not aimed at you. Stop being hyper-defensive.

1. I thought I read that Flame was well targeted and had command and control systems to make sure it hadn't "violated the computers and networks of <i>countless</i> numbers of people and companies". I could be wrong but Flame isn't the latest botnet zombie creator spitting out $largeNumber of infections a second, it's more subtle than that.

2. The Pottery Barn Rule may be A Good Thing(tm), maybe not. But it's pretty clear that (for better or worse, I don't want to debate the politics) the US government has no intention of following The Pottery Barn Rule when it comes to foreign policy decisions regarding the Iraq and Afghan conflicts. It's a rather weak premise to base your argument for a new rule on a past rule that's ineffective because the power in question ignores it.

It's nice to see that people are developing new models and ways of thinking about weight loss but I wonder how effective this research is going to be. The conclusion of the article is the same old "eat less and eat healthier" which is fantastic advice ... and advice that a great many people don't bother to follow.

As a culture we're eating ourselves to death while worrying that low probability events like terrorist attacks are going to kill us. We're killing us and we're doing it slowly.

I believe the thesis here is that big waves, generated by big storms, have the ability to move big rocks. So it's not just the tsunamis that you need to watch out for once you've carefully placed all your 78 ton boulders in your rock garden.