As already suggested, there's a "sweet spot". Different customers tolerate different levels. Lots of my friends enthuse about AC2, so they must be willing to tolerate this DRM. I wouldn't, partly because my internet connection is so flaky that I'd never be able to progress with the game. On the other hand, I am willing to tolerate having to have a disk in the drive, possibly because I've been gaming since the days that a decent game wouldn't fit in memory so it was a technical, not a DRM, requirement. You presumably wouldn't be. And that's the point about the "sweet spot". Not losing more customers because of DRM than you believe you would lose to piracy (less an allowance for the cost of the DRM itself).
Considering "not-heterosexual" includes all shades of bi (and is about women as well as men), my guess is that you could double that number and still be on the low side. But then, that's just a guess. As is your comment.
Well, sure, if you can get a bail-out from one of the world's leading economies. It tends to suggest that it's not religion that's the deciding, or even a significant, factor.
I submit that we can only improve our reasoning abilities by learning our mental weaknesses - that is, being able to go over a mental argument and methodically examine all sources of bias. This would be required by a logic class.
Logic teaches you how to think. If everybody knew how to think, we wouldn't have any of the associated junk like PETA, fear of "death panels", or any of this Creationism crap.
But so few people actually know how to think. It's really the only way we can rise above our capricious biology.
I'm in favour of teaching logic (I would extend it to critical thinking) in schools, but I see two problems with your view of the effect it will have.
Firstly, just because somebody is taught something doesn't mean that they will end up any good at it. My daughter was taught German in school, but still can't buy a postage stamp using German. Teach all the logic you like, many -- I suspect most -- still won't be much good at it.
Secondly, you're wrongly assuming that things like ID are the result of logic failures. They're not. Some proponents of ID are highly competent logicians. Logic takes you from premises to a conclusion, and if you start from different premises then you can legitimately arrive at different conclusions.
The main people who would suffer as a result of an improvement in the population's critical thinking are politicians and advertisers (so don't expect it to happen any time soon). PETA (different values to the mainstream) and Creationism (different assumptions to the mainstream -- the/. mainstream at least) would be pretty much unaffected.
Sure it worked decently: the intellectual standards, the freedom and the overall quality of life are so much better in Russia than the USA, aren't they? Er...
(So I guess since a lot of water is more or less recycled, and so many people wank in the shower, tap water should be a bulletproof contraceptive.)
You're missing the fact that the vessel containing the water has to be hit firmly against a suitable object ten times in order for it to magically remember what it's supposed to do. The object is traditionally a leather cusion stuffed with horsehair. Now, I don't know what you get up to in the shower...
Tell that to South American and African cultures still practicing this successfully after ages.
I'm sure they'll be glad to know their cures haven't cured anyone.
I don't think any of them are practicing homeopathy (unless they've learned it from westerners).
It seems to me,most homeopathy practiced in "advanced cultures "is, as you say , watered down to protect ignorant laymen. A good example of homeopathic remedy to treat nausea and depressed appetite in chemotherapy patients and for relaxing optic muscles of glaucoma sufferers is good old fashioned marijuana. Independent studies (lol),have shown it to be beneficial for much more.
That isn't homeopathy. Seriously find out what the word means before you spout off. Homeopathy teaches that like-cures-like (that's what the "homeo" means). So if you want to cure nausea and depressed appetite you find a substance that causes nausea and depressed appetite (so maijuana is not a homeopathic cure for those symptoms -- according to homeopaths it would cure the munchies). Then (here's the trick) the more you dilute it, the stonger its curative effect becomes, and if you dilute it to the point that there's nothing at all left of the original substance it becomes really powerful! Provided you knock the container firmly ten times on a suitable object so that the water "remembers" what it has been in contact with but which is no longer there.
It's snake oil, nothing more or less. Well, less, actually. It's very very dilute snake oil.
I'm afraid I'd have to say "None of them". Ubuntu just mostly works -- I've never got sound working properly, and the community hasn't been able to help me (and I'm at least moderately techie). I agree that the community is excellent, but I think the non-techie will still be left bewildered. They will get directed to the technical paper addressing their problem, but the community doesn't usually have the patience to completely hand-hold somebody all of the way. At very least the non-techie will need a techie to fully set up the system for them.
And anyway, there's a fundamental flaw in the argument. It assumes that people live alone, so when they're out the house is empty. Oh, wait, this is people who twitter, isn't it? Sorry, my mistake,
I've heard that suggested as the British counterpart to the US obsession with democracy. Offered a choice between Adolf Hitler and Vlad the Impaler, the Americans would ask "Who does the majority prefer" whilst we Brits would ask "Could we have someone with a position somewhere in-between, please?"
It kinda confirms (one of) my worst fears about the human race, namely that it sees the laws of reality as something political, right up into the echelons of power.
I've mentioned it before on/., but I was once on an international standardisation committee on which somebody questioned the statement that pure Poisson processes were ergodic. Rather than get somebody to check a textbook or do some maths, the (American) chair demanded that it be put to a vote. At least some Americans seem to be so devoted to democracy that it has become a religion, and they can't cope with the idea that reality might not be democratically decided.
we must point out that freedom is our primary concern
It might be yours, but when it comes to choosing software getting the job done cost effectively is mine. If the closed source commercial software will do the job and the FOSS won't then I'll choose the closed source commercial, thanks. It's not an automatic choice. Some FOSS is better than the closed source commercial, but some is complete rubbish, and in the latter case I couldn't give a monkeys about the "freedom" it gives me.
the government wants to push digital radio so it can sell off the rest of the radio spectrum
And, I suspect, so they could control what we listen to, because I can get lots of foreign stations on my analogue radio, but only UK stations on DAB. I'm not sure whether or when when internet radio will come out of its niche to defeat that.
Slashdot Mirror
As already suggested, there's a "sweet spot". Different customers tolerate different levels. Lots of my friends enthuse about AC2, so they must be willing to tolerate this DRM. I wouldn't, partly because my internet connection is so flaky that I'd never be able to progress with the game. On the other hand, I am willing to tolerate having to have a disk in the drive, possibly because I've been gaming since the days that a decent game wouldn't fit in memory so it was a technical, not a DRM, requirement. You presumably wouldn't be. And that's the point about the "sweet spot". Not losing more customers because of DRM than you believe you would lose to piracy (less an allowance for the cost of the DRM itself).
"I think therefore I am" sounds a bit bold an affirmation.
Descartes was aware of that, and tried to resolve it, although his resolution is probably not satisfactory. I suspect that there isn't a resolution.
Considering "not-heterosexual" includes all shades of bi (and is about women as well as men), my guess is that you could double that number and still be on the low side. But then, that's just a guess. As is your comment.
Well, sure, if you can get a bail-out from one of the world's leading economies. It tends to suggest that it's not religion that's the deciding, or even a significant, factor.
Yes, it's quite a miracle that USA is still free despite that religion thing.
Glory be! It's a miracle! Praise the Lord!
He points at his understanding of reality as a justification for his opinion.
Fixed that for ya.
Removing the biggest tool for public manipulation from those who would use it sounds good to me.
That would be either sex or national identity, then. Good luck with your attempts to remove them.
I submit that we can only improve our reasoning abilities by learning our mental weaknesses - that is, being able to go over a mental argument and methodically examine all sources of bias. This would be required by a logic class.
Logic teaches you how to think. If everybody knew how to think, we wouldn't have any of the associated junk like PETA, fear of "death panels", or any of this Creationism crap.
But so few people actually know how to think. It's really the only way we can rise above our capricious biology.
I'm in favour of teaching logic (I would extend it to critical thinking) in schools, but I see two problems with your view of the effect it will have.
Firstly, just because somebody is taught something doesn't mean that they will end up any good at it. My daughter was taught German in school, but still can't buy a postage stamp using German. Teach all the logic you like, many -- I suspect most -- still won't be much good at it.
Secondly, you're wrongly assuming that things like ID are the result of logic failures. They're not. Some proponents of ID are highly competent logicians. Logic takes you from premises to a conclusion, and if you start from different premises then you can legitimately arrive at different conclusions.
The main people who would suffer as a result of an improvement in the population's critical thinking are politicians and advertisers (so don't expect it to happen any time soon). PETA (different values to the mainstream) and Creationism (different assumptions to the mainstream -- the /. mainstream at least) would be pretty much unaffected.
Sure it worked decently: the intellectual standards, the freedom and the overall quality of life are so much better in Russia than the USA, aren't they? Er...
Which is why religion and all other straight-faced magical thinking should be abolished.
A foolish and naive idea. You will never be able to abolish Mac v. PC arguments!
(So I guess since a lot of water is more or less recycled, and so many people wank in the shower, tap water should be a bulletproof contraceptive.)
You're missing the fact that the vessel containing the water has to be hit firmly against a suitable object ten times in order for it to magically remember what it's supposed to do. The object is traditionally a leather cusion stuffed with horsehair. Now, I don't know what you get up to in the shower...
Tell that to South American and African cultures still practicing this successfully after ages. I'm sure they'll be glad to know their cures haven't cured anyone.
I don't think any of them are practicing homeopathy (unless they've learned it from westerners).
It seems to me,most homeopathy practiced in "advanced cultures "is, as you say , watered down to protect ignorant laymen. A good example of homeopathic remedy to treat nausea and depressed appetite in chemotherapy patients and for relaxing optic muscles of glaucoma sufferers is good old fashioned marijuana. Independent studies (lol),have shown it to be beneficial for much more.
That isn't homeopathy. Seriously find out what the word means before you spout off. Homeopathy teaches that like-cures-like (that's what the "homeo" means). So if you want to cure nausea and depressed appetite you find a substance that causes nausea and depressed appetite (so maijuana is not a homeopathic cure for those symptoms -- according to homeopaths it would cure the munchies). Then (here's the trick) the more you dilute it, the stonger its curative effect becomes, and if you dilute it to the point that there's nothing at all left of the original substance it becomes really powerful! Provided you knock the container firmly ten times on a suitable object so that the water "remembers" what it has been in contact with but which is no longer there.
It's snake oil, nothing more or less. Well, less, actually. It's very very dilute snake oil.
Slashdot doesn't tell you anything. Slashdot is a collection of individuals. Some of them tell you one thing, others tell you something different.
I'm afraid I'd have to say "None of them". Ubuntu just mostly works -- I've never got sound working properly, and the community hasn't been able to help me (and I'm at least moderately techie). I agree that the community is excellent, but I think the non-techie will still be left bewildered. They will get directed to the technical paper addressing their problem, but the community doesn't usually have the patience to completely hand-hold somebody all of the way. At very least the non-techie will need a techie to fully set up the system for them.
And anyway, there's a fundamental flaw in the argument. It assumes that people live alone, so when they're out the house is empty. Oh, wait, this is people who twitter, isn't it? Sorry, my mistake,
I've heard that suggested as the British counterpart to the US obsession with democracy. Offered a choice between Adolf Hitler and Vlad the Impaler, the Americans would ask "Who does the majority prefer" whilst we Brits would ask "Could we have someone with a position somewhere in-between, please?"
Essentially, the chair called for a vote on a matter of well-established mathematical fact.
It kinda confirms (one of) my worst fears about the human race, namely that it sees the laws of reality as something political, right up into the echelons of power.
I've mentioned it before on /., but I was once on an international standardisation committee on which somebody questioned the statement that pure Poisson processes were ergodic. Rather than get somebody to check a textbook or do some maths, the (American) chair demanded that it be put to a vote. At least some Americans seem to be so devoted to democracy that it has become a religion, and they can't cope with the idea that reality might not be democratically decided.
we must point out that freedom is our primary concern
It might be yours, but when it comes to choosing software getting the job done cost effectively is mine. If the closed source commercial software will do the job and the FOSS won't then I'll choose the closed source commercial, thanks. It's not an automatic choice. Some FOSS is better than the closed source commercial, but some is complete rubbish, and in the latter case I couldn't give a monkeys about the "freedom" it gives me.
Certainly the radio in my car -- built in 2002 -- doesn't cover LW. Nor dows my wife's, and nor do most of the ones in my house.
it’s warmer
Than where? Greece? Southern Spain? Don't think so.
the food is better
If you can live on a diet of cheese and chocolate. Would you happen to be American?
the scenery is beautiful
I'll give you that one.
Ok, I saw that but didn't spot how to de-obfusticate it. I think I've got it now.
It's a long while since I have had a radio with an LW button, although I have one with a number of SW buttons. Not many people have, though.
Does any government give a rat's ass about it being appropriate, effective, proportional, in keeping with its' citizens rights? No.
Fixed that for ya.
the government wants to push digital radio so it can sell off the rest of the radio spectrum
And, I suspect, so they could control what we listen to, because I can get lots of foreign stations on my analogue radio, but only UK stations on DAB. I'm not sure whether or when when internet radio will come out of its niche to defeat that.