True, but some things, (like e-gold) allow one to buffer one's Net spending from one's credit rating, this works especially well for small ticket items.
Couple that with the fact that most credit cards now insuring cardholders against large Internet-based losses as an incentive for cardholders to switch, and I think that the Web may still have a viable business model or two to be developed.
Ooooooh. A famous Russian novelist is a really meaningful source of wisdom (Feodor Dostoevski, Russian novelist, 1821-1881). I feel faint.
Let me throw in a quote of my own:
"God made big men and God made little men, but Sam Colt, he made them equal."
Unknown (to me)
Three cheers for the 2nd amendment!
Yup, prisons represent the ultimate in gun control and security. And many are little "Lord of the Flies" incubators. What a great argument for arming the citizens ("an armed society is a polite society", R.A. Heinlein).
Personally, I think the Russkie got it wrong - the true test of civilization is probably found in its hospitals, where it takes care of its weakest citizens, not its prisons, where it incarcerates some of its most predatory animals.
This is a very open question - almost like flame bait, because you did not say what freedoms you are most interested in.
Let's start with the most important equation in politics:
Freedom is inversely proportional to equality of outcomes
In other words, you can be very free, or you can be very equal in outcomes (no nasty CEO's making 100's of times the pay of the average working in the company factory). Can't have both.
That said, what freedom do you want?
Freedom from want? try one of those high-tax, homogeneous societies like Sweden. Just be willing to give up most of your economic choice freedoms.
Freedom from arbitrary laws: Go for one of those southeast Asia countries where they sell their 2yr-old daughters into sexual slavery. They won't bug you much, and you can dope yourself up pretty easily.
Freedom of religion 'Fraid the ol US probably leads here. Ever been to the Middle East?
Freedom from politics? Tired of election news? Try a real garden state like Bulgaria or Yemen. No recounts there, fer sure.
Economic freedom? There are lots of places where your economic freedoms are paramount. Try Singapore - just don't chew gum in public.
How about one of those exotic South Pacific islands? No opportunities, but no real restriction either.
Freedom from inequality? The possibilities are endless. You can go Iran-like, and know that laws are ruthlessly and equitably applied (within the subclass you fall into, e.g., women). Or you might try Cuba, there should be little inequality there, everyone is poor, but happy. Same with Bangladesh, everyone is pretty much equally poor.
There are lots of other freedoms you can choose from, give it a shot!
1 in 10! I don't theeenk so. I would have expected slashdotters to be aware of the fact that the 1 in 10 statistic has been discredited by more recent research. I believe the real number is less than or equal to 1% (1 in 100).
Disclaimer: I'm not a doctor, though I once played one with the neighbor girl.
Yes, but this whole generation gap thing is relatively new - our biology has not had time to evolve to catch up with our culture.
If you look at modern primative cultures (whether in the jungle or in the inner city), the primary method for passing on culture to the new generation has always been their desire to emulate their elders.
Electronic culture has only just begun to challenge that mode - and in many cultures it is looked upon as a real and frightening threat. There is a reason why there is only one TV station broadcasting in wonderful progressive Iran.
I, for one, am overwhelmed with emotion as I contemplate the possibility that we can weave an electronic culture throughout the connected world that will be able to survive and (hopefully) come to dominate the superstitious materialist world of the religous fanatics.
The real question? Perhaps it is whether couch-potato warriors trained to twitch-and-kill ala UT (my personal favorite) can hold their own against physical killers trained with real guns and explosives ("Hey, where's the fekkin cheat mode?"). Remember the slow bayonnet killing in "Saving Private Ryan"? The US troop was essentially pleading for explanation as if the war was a game and he wanted to get clarification.
Well, not exactly, but the argument that "words is just words" fails to understand why people use the "vulgarities" they do. The entire and only reason to use them is to indicate strong emotion and/or to shock the user. They are the verbal equivalent of baring one's teeth (if you were a dog) or of raising one's tail (if you were a skunk).
If the commonly accepted "naughty" words no longer perform that function, then other words will be created to perform the functions formerly performed by the now weakened words. I would prefer to keep the well tested words we know rather than worry that my innocent "well, shiver me timbers" had become "fighting words" that could get me killed.
For an example, note that "you fekker" has been replaced with "you muthafekker" because fekker is too diluted.
1) Gore should concede. If Gore were as much of a statesman as Nixon eventually became (he eventually reigned in his staff dogs), he might concede even though he probably won. Ironic isn't it? If Nixon had fought the 1960 results, and had become president instead of JFK, then Vietnam (as a war) probably never would have happened (Republicans are notoriously unwilling to start limited, escalation-style wars). Hmmmm, maybe Gore shouldn't concede.
2) Error count is way beyond expectation. "This is almost twice the number in 1996." - yeah, but the voter turnout was larger, so a larger number of spoiled ballots is correct. Can you compute the Pr[spoiled >= 29,702 | total vote is x]? If you do, and you find that this probability is greater than about 0.5 (50%), then get over it.
3) Machine ballots may be exempt from the law describing the layout ("no butterflys").Good point - but even if the ballots _were_ illegal then put the county commissioners in the blocks and keep or throw out the county, but don't double the wrong by things like revotes.
4) So? Just because Texas made it law doesn't mean that hand counts are more accurate. After all, Arkansas is rumored to having once legislated that Pi=3.0. Sheeese.
5) The myth is not a myth, it is unfair to selectively resample just the pro-Gore counties. Bush _should have_ asked for a recount, but probably did not because he wanted to appear more "presidential" and didn't want to have to call in all the fekkin lawyers.
6) Hmmmm, Buchanan (the dumb fek) can't say his votes belong to anybody. He might say they were intended for somebody else. Should we re-allocate legitimate (though stupid and probably unintended) votes because we don't believe the voter? "Excuse me sir, I couldn't help but notice you were voting for Nader, surely you meant to vote for yadi.."
7) Electoral college is it. Yup, and as a statistician, the electoral college is a very sound system indeed, though the Maine approach that allocates votes by representative district is even better.
8) Cook county ballots..." So?
Another poster states: "It's a great faq; I agree with most everything on it; I just wish it was a bit more subtle in its partisanship" [emphasis added]. So? If it were less partisan then it could be passed off as impartial?
Disclaimer: I think Gore probably won Florida, and probably will win Florida in the final analysis, and will probably suffer a miserable 4 years until the voters put him out of our misery.
This is the method we used in at least one precinct in Minnesota (yes, I _am_ a mathematician). It works great, leaves a hard copy trail (bits, what bits? We don't need no stinkin' bits), ensures that at least the ballot is valid (can't help you if your too stupid to mark the right candidate though), and is quite efficient at the poll since the machine only takes a fraction of a second to check the ballot.
Much as I like trees, I would not want the entire voting record to be only the bits on a system.
Re:The tough part was probably the climb, though
on
Skiing Down Everest
·
· Score: 1
"Climbing Mt. Everest, with or without skis on your back, is one of the most dangerous activities a human can do. "
Not true - there are several documented instances of people falling/jumping out of flying airplanes and surviving the impact. This "parachuteless jumping" is probably the most extreme of extreme sports - certainly the odds are way against you, and isn't that the main idea of extreme sports, to do something that, if done wrong, may kill you? All I can say is "Darwin award contender!"
Welcome back to the sixties - when people who could not get legislation/enforcement to help solve problems turned to frivolous court cases instead. We still see this effect whenever a tree-hugging group tries to block construction of the newest strip-mall. But it is ironic who the players are.
I speak English, Spanish and German, as well as many computer languages. I have also studied Chomsky as part of my education in AI and parsing.
That said, the basic structure of a sentence is S-V-O-I
Subject - who is acting
Verb - what action
Object - what are they acting on?
Indirect object - what is the object acting on?
For example, Bob(S) cooked(V) the apple(O) over the fire(I)
Well, something like that. The only other information we convey is TENSE (when and how we acted) and modifiers (adverbs for modify the verb, adjectives for modifying the S, I, O), as in
big Bob(S) quickly cooked(V) the red apple(O) over the hot fire(I).
IMHO, an optimal language would use the same word for all situations, so I would restate the sentence as
Bob cook past apple over fire
rather than complicate things with irregularities like endings (cook-ed) and hand motions (Italian anyone?).
Now, how does this relate to programming? Basically, programming is algorithmic (do this, then do this, then do this). Whether the algorithms are linear, parallel, massively parallel, the syntax of the "code" needs to describe what is to be done. Abstractions and abstracted languages (anyone remember APL?) tend to do three things: (1) make it easy to do hard things, (2) make it hard to do easy things, and (IMNSHO)(3) make for longer learning curves. Life is tradeoffs, and the more complex languages trade off longer apprenticeship periods for faster development later. It's essentially a form of re-usability (when is the last time you coded a SIN() function?).
All that said, I doubt that any human language gives a programmer any leg up in understanding the C++ sytnax for a counter-based incrementing loop.
My son is in a trade school learning lotsa programming environments and languages - and has commented on how much of an advantage he has had since he got to watch me program as he was growing up. I guess I did for him what my dad did with me with cars.
BTW - I lurked at the trade school during orientation, was finally exposed as a "real programmer". They asked me to define success and I told them that when I go home at the end of a day saying "I cannot believe I'm paid for having this much fun", I called those days "successes".
Copyrights help ensure that the people who invest resources in marketing art get paid (as they should), and indirectly ends up ensuring the artist gets paid. There is very little issue with copyrighting original statues or oil paintings because the technology for duplicating them to the level necessary is prohibitively expensive. Consider information-based entertainment (music, books) -- does anyone sample MP3 at voice-only quality levels (sure, I read a Cliff-Notes® once, but its not the same).
In a completely "information is free" world, peer reviewed processes (EBay, SlashDot) will rule the availability of info-tainment (in the sense of being able to find stuff), and the National Endowment for the Arts (whom we all regard so highly) will be the only way an "info-artiste" will be able to make a living.
Oh boy!
In fact, a significant portion of the SFWA web site seems to be devoted to answering the question "How do I, Joe Sixpackinski-Warlock, brilliant undiscovered(TM, StarTrek) writer get into the club?".
The lament in the 60's was, how you gonna get 'em to buy the cow if the milk is free? The counterpoint is, how ya gonna make a living if people think they are entitled to free milk?
[alert type="Tired old cliche"] TANSTAAFL [/alert]
Get real. I'll just pull out my old reel-to-reel, run a cable to my Apple ][ and download the audio version through the tape input. Piece 'o virtual cake.
The recent novel "Mother of Storms" includes a character who makes a living patenting ideas just as fast as he can, basically browsing like some sort of toothless vampire off the bleeding edge of technology.
An even older story (name escapes me) involved a team that invented time travel (or something), patented it, then sat back and waited for someone else to reinvent it, commercialize it, planning on then emerging from under a rock to try and claim the income stream.
I can easily see a person on the edge of a psychotic break becoming very homicidal and violent IRL after a session in a VR, and it is not hard to conceive of someone stressing themselves into a heart attack if the VR was as real as shown in the X-F episode.
Further, some psychotics have created simple stigmata on their hands, using their fingernails, during religious-frenzy induced "VR" episodes (all without hardware or software!).
I've even written a short story that used a similar theme (man dies after being shot at by a blank, because he believed it was a real gun/bullet).
That all said, the whole thing would have been much better (IMNSHO) if:
People had not disappeared when the game was shut down,
The killer female had actually been a physical person who had tied into the software for a VR skin over a normal body (nice chance for a morph scene here). Even the dissolving escapes would be allowed if the players had been wearing video glasses fed from the program.
It's too bad the people programming the special effects don't get to give feedback to the writers, maybe then they'd get it better.
However, in the final analysis, X-F is a fantasy show, not a science-fiction show.
This is exactly the right response. Too many people confuse "proof-of-concept" work that shows that the Internet could carry these bandwidth hogs with "right-of-access".
Just because someone shows a way to use a packet-based system to show real-time video of a coffee pot does not mean that that system must forever more carry, for free, this sort of traffic.
Universities are especially vulnerable to these arguments since many of their students are buffered from the real worlds concerns of "who pays for this trash?"
All of these analogies fail to address the basic idea that the information is what is protected, and the fact that someone can figure out how to get at it does not mean that they should do so.
If the MPAA has tied the information (the movie) to a media (DVD) and a licensed player (DVD player), then any use outside of that is immoral.
If your argument is that the MPAA should not own the information (the movie) then you should argue that with the producers, directors, actors, etc. who give them that information.
Actually, information is different from, say money. Making a copy of information does not directly reduce the value of the original, so unless Mitnick destroyed the original data, there is no value in the encrypted copy in the gov's possession.
OTH - if they are looking to see what data he stole, then 5th ammendment might apply. A sticky wicket, I hope the people who sort it out understand the concepts better than they seem to have in similar situations.
Slashdot Mirror
So, dirty, grimy sooty eastern Europe was just ahead of its time?
Couple that with the fact that most credit cards now insuring cardholders against large Internet-based losses as an incentive for cardholders to switch, and I think that the Web may still have a viable business model or two to be developed.
"I'm not a human, but I play one IRL."
Let me throw in a quote of my own:
Three cheers for the 2nd amendment! Yup, prisons represent the ultimate in gun control and security. And many are little "Lord of the Flies" incubators. What a great argument for arming the citizens ("an armed society is a polite society", R.A. Heinlein).Personally, I think the Russkie got it wrong - the true test of civilization is probably found in its hospitals, where it takes care of its weakest citizens, not its prisons, where it incarcerates some of its most predatory animals.
Let's start with the most important equation in politics:
In other words, you can be very free, or you can be very equal in outcomes (no nasty CEO's making 100's of times the pay of the average working in the company factory). Can't have both.
That said, what freedom do you want?
Freedom from want? try one of those high-tax, homogeneous societies like Sweden. Just be willing to give up most of your economic choice freedoms.
Freedom from arbitrary laws: Go for one of those southeast Asia countries where they sell their 2yr-old daughters into sexual slavery. They won't bug you much, and you can dope yourself up pretty easily.
Freedom of religion 'Fraid the ol US probably leads here. Ever been to the Middle East?
Freedom from politics? Tired of election news? Try a real garden state like Bulgaria or Yemen. No recounts there, fer sure.
Economic freedom? There are lots of places where your economic freedoms are paramount. Try Singapore - just don't chew gum in public. How about one of those exotic South Pacific islands? No opportunities, but no real restriction either. Freedom from inequality? The possibilities are endless. You can go Iran-like, and know that laws are ruthlessly and equitably applied (within the subclass you fall into, e.g., women). Or you might try Cuba, there should be little inequality there, everyone is poor, but happy. Same with Bangladesh, everyone is pretty much equally poor.
There are lots of other freedoms you can choose from, give it a shot!
Disclaimer: I'm not a doctor, though I once played one with the neighbor girl.
"One-blink-shopping" (TM, R, Patent pending)
"You blink it, you buy it!" (TM, R, Patent pending)
"Eye for an aye"(TM, R, Patent pending)
If you look at modern primative cultures (whether in the jungle or in the inner city), the primary method for passing on culture to the new generation has always been their desire to emulate their elders.
Electronic culture has only just begun to challenge that mode - and in many cultures it is looked upon as a real and frightening threat. There is a reason why there is only one TV station broadcasting in wonderful progressive Iran.
I, for one, am overwhelmed with emotion as I contemplate the possibility that we can weave an electronic culture throughout the connected world that will be able to survive and (hopefully) come to dominate the superstitious materialist world of the religous fanatics.
The real question? Perhaps it is whether couch-potato warriors trained to twitch-and-kill ala UT (my personal favorite) can hold their own against physical killers trained with real guns and explosives ("Hey, where's the fekkin cheat mode?"). Remember the slow bayonnet killing in "Saving Private Ryan"? The US troop was essentially pleading for explanation as if the war was a game and he wanted to get clarification.
Concur - my son starting work two years ago and is already making almost 60K working on a factory floor. And he ain't [sic] rich.
Well, not exactly, but the argument that "words is just words" fails to understand why people use the "vulgarities" they do. The entire and only reason to use them is to indicate strong emotion and/or to shock the user. They are the verbal equivalent of baring one's teeth (if you were a dog) or of raising one's tail (if you were a skunk).
If the commonly accepted "naughty" words no longer perform that function, then other words will be created to perform the functions formerly performed by the now weakened words. I would prefer to keep the well tested words we know rather than worry that my innocent "well, shiver me timbers" had become "fighting words" that could get me killed.
For an example, note that "you fekker" has been replaced with "you muthafekker" because fekker is too diluted.
SPFCCMT
1) Gore should concede. If Gore were as much of a statesman as Nixon eventually became (he eventually reigned in his staff dogs), he might concede even though he probably won. Ironic isn't it? If Nixon had fought the 1960 results, and had become president instead of JFK, then Vietnam (as a war) probably never would have happened (Republicans are notoriously unwilling to start limited, escalation-style wars). Hmmmm, maybe Gore shouldn't concede.
2) Error count is way beyond expectation. "This is almost twice the number in 1996." - yeah, but the voter turnout was larger, so a larger number of spoiled ballots is correct. Can you compute the Pr[spoiled >= 29,702 | total vote is x]? If you do, and you find that this probability is greater than about 0.5 (50%), then get over it.
3) Machine ballots may be exempt from the law describing the layout ("no butterflys").Good point - but even if the ballots _were_ illegal then put the county commissioners in the blocks and keep or throw out the county, but don't double the wrong by things like revotes.
4) So? Just because Texas made it law doesn't mean that hand counts are more accurate. After all, Arkansas is rumored to having once legislated that Pi=3.0. Sheeese.
5) The myth is not a myth, it is unfair to selectively resample just the pro-Gore counties. Bush _should have_ asked for a recount, but probably did not because he wanted to appear more "presidential" and didn't want to have to call in all the fekkin lawyers.
6) Hmmmm, Buchanan (the dumb fek) can't say his votes belong to anybody. He might say they were intended for somebody else. Should we re-allocate legitimate (though stupid and probably unintended) votes because we don't believe the voter? "Excuse me sir, I couldn't help but notice you were voting for Nader, surely you meant to vote for yadi .."
7) Electoral college is it. Yup, and as a statistician, the electoral college is a very sound system indeed, though the Maine approach that allocates votes by representative district is even better.
8) Cook county ballots ..." So?
Another poster states: "It's a great faq; I agree with most everything on it; I just wish it was a bit more subtle in its partisanship" [emphasis added]. So? If it were less partisan then it could be passed off as impartial?
Disclaimer: I think Gore probably won Florida, and probably will win Florida in the final analysis, and will probably suffer a miserable 4 years until the voters put him out of our misery.
Much as I like trees, I would not want the entire voting record to be only the bits on a system.
Not true - there are several documented instances of people falling/jumping out of flying airplanes and surviving the impact. This "parachuteless jumping" is probably the most extreme of extreme sports - certainly the odds are way against you, and isn't that the main idea of extreme sports, to do something that, if done wrong, may kill you? All I can say is "Darwin award contender!"
Welcome back to the sixties - when people who could not get legislation/enforcement to help solve problems turned to frivolous court cases instead. We still see this effect whenever a tree-hugging group tries to block construction of the newest strip-mall. But it is ironic who the players are.
That said, the basic structure of a sentence is S-V-O-I
- Subject - who is acting
- Verb - what action
- Object - what are they acting on?
- Indirect object - what is the object acting on?
For example, Bob(S) cooked(V) the apple(O) over the fire(I)Well, something like that. The only other information we convey is TENSE (when and how we acted) and modifiers (adverbs for modify the verb, adjectives for modifying the S, I, O), as in
- big Bob(S) quickly cooked(V) the red apple(O) over the hot fire(I).
IMHO, an optimal language would use the same word for all situations, so I would restate the sentence as- Bob cook past apple over fire
rather than complicate things with irregularities like endings (cook-ed) and hand motions (Italian anyone?).Now, how does this relate to programming? Basically, programming is algorithmic (do this, then do this, then do this). Whether the algorithms are linear, parallel, massively parallel, the syntax of the "code" needs to describe what is to be done. Abstractions and abstracted languages (anyone remember APL?) tend to do three things: (1) make it easy to do hard things, (2) make it hard to do easy things, and (IMNSHO)(3) make for longer learning curves. Life is tradeoffs, and the more complex languages trade off longer apprenticeship periods for faster development later. It's essentially a form of re-usability (when is the last time you coded a SIN() function?).
All that said, I doubt that any human language gives a programmer any leg up in understanding the C++ sytnax for a counter-based incrementing loop.
Sounds like open source to me ...
BTW - I lurked at the trade school during orientation, was finally exposed as a "real programmer". They asked me to define success and I told them that when I go home at the end of a day saying "I cannot believe I'm paid for having this much fun", I called those days "successes".
In a completely "information is free" world, peer reviewed processes (EBay, SlashDot) will rule the availability of info-tainment (in the sense of being able to find stuff), and the National Endowment for the Arts (whom we all regard so highly) will be the only way an "info-artiste" will be able to make a living.
Oh boy!
In fact, a significant portion of the SFWA web site seems to be devoted to answering the question "How do I, Joe Sixpackinski-Warlock, brilliant undiscovered(TM, StarTrek) writer get into the club?".
The lament in the 60's was, how you gonna get 'em to buy the cow if the milk is free? The counterpoint is, how ya gonna make a living if people think they are entitled to free milk?
[alert type="Tired old cliche"]
TANSTAAFL
[/alert]
0.0 to cooking in 0.63 seconds!
There's even an MPEG out there somewhere.
Get real. I'll just pull out my old reel-to-reel, run a cable to my Apple ][ and download the audio version through the tape input.
Piece 'o virtual cake.
An even older story (name escapes me) involved a team that invented time travel (or something), patented it, then sat back and waited for someone else to reinvent it, commercialize it, planning on then emerging from under a rock to try and claim the income stream.
Hello - can anyone say "amazoning!"?.
Further, some psychotics have created simple stigmata on their hands, using their fingernails, during religious-frenzy induced "VR" episodes (all without hardware or software!).
I've even written a short story that used a similar theme (man dies after being shot at by a blank, because he believed it was a real gun/bullet).
That all said, the whole thing would have been much better (IMNSHO) if:
- People had not disappeared when the game was shut down,
- The killer female had actually been a physical person who had tied into the software for a VR skin over a normal body (nice chance for a morph scene here). Even the dissolving escapes would be allowed if the players had been wearing video glasses fed from the program.
It's too bad the people programming the special effects don't get to give feedback to the writers, maybe then they'd get it better.However, in the final analysis, X-F is a fantasy show, not a science-fiction show.
Just because someone shows a way to use a packet-based system to show real-time video of a coffee pot does not mean that that system must forever more carry, for free, this sort of traffic.
Universities are especially vulnerable to these arguments since many of their students are buffered from the real worlds concerns of "who pays for this trash?"
If the MPAA has tied the information (the movie) to a media (DVD) and a licensed player (DVD player), then any use outside of that is immoral.
If your argument is that the MPAA should not own the information (the movie) then you should argue that with the producers, directors, actors, etc. who give them that information.
This is your brain ...
OTH - if they are looking to see what data he stole, then 5th ammendment might apply. A sticky wicket, I hope the people who sort it out understand the concepts better than they seem to have in similar situations.