I agree, and would never argue that vendors should hide bugs they find or bugs they fix.
HOWEVER, require all bug fixes be fully publicly disclosed could create some perverse incentives to not patch a bug. If they feel that not many people know about it, it may seem advantageous to a short sighted vendor to just hide the bug and pretend it doesn't exist, since fixing it requires disclosing its existence.
This is a horrible thing of course, but I don't think a vendor being this short sighted would be shocking.
The upload bandwidth he was talking about is for the VPN tunnel.... since the person hosting the VPN on the US side would have to stream the feed from Hulu to the guy outside the US.
I agree with everything you say EXCEPT that a GUI interface would make it harder to use your smartphone with 1 bar. Nothing inherent in a GUI requires more information to be sent down the wire than a CLI would, unless you were trying to construct the GUI dynamically from data returned by the server.
That is interesting. In the United States, we often have the opposite situation: debit cards often cost $1.50 per use while credit cards are free. I have seen a couple of gas stations who charge less for cash, but that is extremely rare.
Only if you let it. I have had credit cards for all my adult life and never once paid any interest. If you are the type of person who controls their spending, it doesn't have to trap you into spending money you don't have.
Debit cards are functionally useless, since they give you nothing that using credit card which you pay off every month wouldn't while costing you quite a bit.
If you have a credit card you pay off every month, you get an interest free loan for a month. You earn points for rewards. You get protection against fraud. You often get warranties on things you wouldn't normally get.
You get NONE of this with a debit card. The only reason a debit card is preferable is if you don't have the self control to spend an amount you can pay off every month, or you have such a bad credit rating you can't get a credit card with a grace period.
How else would you define targeting in this context other than to mean only binding to cancerous cells? It seems you are implying that targeting can only refer to conscious 'aiming', but that is only a subset of things that can be considered targeted.
Targeted can mean 'select as an object of attention or attack'. That is what they are doing when the design a drug.. selecting cancer cells for attack, and then designing the drug so it will only effect those cells. Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_design
Targeted drugs DO mean something specific in pharmacology.
Now to counter my own argument (because I like to do that sort of thing):
You are totally stacking the deck by choosing this type of argument, and abusing the particulars of the crime of copyright infringement.
By choosing to compare a world where the download takes place and a world where the downloader was never born, you state that, to the copyright holder, the world is exactly the same. However, it isn't; there exists one less potential customer in the world. Now, you might say that this one customer is such a tiny fraction the world, and anyway the likelihood that he or she would become an actual customer are pretty low. While the chance of this person being a customer, while certainly less than 1, is most likely higher than that of a random person in the world (they show some interest in content by illegally downloading it). Now apply this little thought experiment to ALL downloaders; now the world either has all these people downloading music or all those downloaders were never born. That is a LOT less customers in this new downloaders-never-born world. To act as if the worlds are the same is a bit disingenuous. Whether these damages are greater or less than what is assessed can be argued, but it is not as simple as saying the worlds would be the same.
I don't know if increasing punitive damages to fit our dislike is illogical, or even necessarily a bad idea. Punitive damages DO in some sense measure the strength of the public's dislike for an action; the purpose of establishing punitive damages is to reduce the occurrences of a behavior that society deems undesirable. It makes sense that we would want to more strongly punish actions that we dislike more than actions that we actually like. There is no 'objective', 'purely logical' reason to assign any specific value to punitive damages (otherwise they would be compensatory damages, ie equal to the monetary value of the harm done). Therefore, any argument as to how much punitive damages should be assessed for various infractions would logically be based on how badly society wants to prevent the action from happening.
In the case of illegal filesharing of copyrighted work, it is hard to make an argument that any member of society is suffering a great harm that is higher than the compensatory damages equal to the purchase cost of the downloaded work. In fact, until the illegal downloader is caught, the offended party is unaware that a crime has even taken place! From the "victim's" perspective, the world where the illegal download took place and a world where the downloader had never even been born are absolutely identical. It is hard to make an argument that there should be large punitive damages to prevent something that has such an unnoticeable effect.
Spam, on the other hand, causes people anguish long before the criminal is caught. A world where spam is sent and a world where all the spammers were never born would be a completely different world. Society would certainly notice the difference, and would be much happier in a world where spammers had never been born. It makes perfect logical sense to want to increase the punitive parts of the damages.
Which is just like scaling a database. Adding slave servers will only get you so far, as each slave still has to read through all the data. Only by sharding can you expand beyond a certain point.
I am a bit confused by your argument. Your 'alternative' measure that you seem to think provides more information is the EXACT same measurement; it is simply the inverse of the ratio. You can simply put a 1 over your MPG if you would prefer to use gallons per mile. Also, your point about a 10 mpg improvement mattering more to a 25mpg vehicle than a 2000 mpg vehicle is merely pointing out that in RATIO measures (which both MPGs and your alternative 'liters per 100kms' are examples of) it is important to measure the PERCENTAGE change rather than the absolute change. Your example would have the exact same result using your alternative measure (only in the reverse case); going from 1000 liters/100km to 990 liters/100km is less of a percentage improvement than going from 12liters/100kms to 2liters/100 kms.
However, this doesn't seem to be the main point you are trying to make. The main point I read is that we should focus on the 'low hanging fruit'; the (correct) notion that we should start by trying to improve the least efficient users of energy first, because each percentage point of improvement in them will save more fuel overall due to their higher initial fuel use age.
It also may be true that it would be helpful to consumers to show them how much money and fuel they would save with each car choice given their driving habits; however, this is done by using on of our ratio measurements to calculate the actual fuel usage given a fixed distance (either multiplying by your liters/km ratio or dividing by MPG). I will grant that your ratio might make it more obvious what this calculation will result in (given that you chose a denominator that you hope is close to the actual number of kms driven), but your measure is still just a ratio.
The last point I would like to make is that MPG is just as good as your liters/100km in determining how much money you will save by switching to a more fuel efficient vehicle. If you double your gas mileage, you will cut your fuel bill in half... it is that simple. This is true no matter how many times you double your MPGs..... although it is also true that the absolute dollar amount of those savings gets smaller and smaller as you move up the fuel efficiency chart.
On Slashdot, we discuss science, technology, and computers (logic machines). Creationism is anti-science and anti-logic. Wouldn't it make sense that posts arguing against science and logic would be modded down on such a site?
You are exactly right. This is for the very same reason that we need to start making encryption standard for everyone; if your scenario was to take place under current circumstances, you would already be under suspicion and under greater focus since most people don't encrypt everything... when everyone encrypts everything, it will finally be the case that no pattern can be deduced from the presence of encrypted data
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I agree, and would never argue that vendors should hide bugs they find or bugs they fix.
HOWEVER, require all bug fixes be fully publicly disclosed could create some perverse incentives to not patch a bug. If they feel that not many people know about it, it may seem advantageous to a short sighted vendor to just hide the bug and pretend it doesn't exist, since fixing it requires disclosing its existence.
This is a horrible thing of course, but I don't think a vendor being this short sighted would be shocking.
But if he doesn't use those abbreviations, how will everyone know how super smart and in the know he is?
The upload bandwidth he was talking about is for the VPN tunnel.... since the person hosting the VPN on the US side would have to stream the feed from Hulu to the guy outside the US.
I agree with everything you say EXCEPT that a GUI interface would make it harder to use your smartphone with 1 bar. Nothing inherent in a GUI requires more information to be sent down the wire than a CLI would, unless you were trying to construct the GUI dynamically from data returned by the server.
That is interesting. In the United States, we often have the opposite situation: debit cards often cost $1.50 per use while credit cards are free. I have seen a couple of gas stations who charge less for cash, but that is extremely rare.
Only if you let it. I have had credit cards for all my adult life and never once paid any interest. If you are the type of person who controls their spending, it doesn't have to trap you into spending money you don't have.
Debit cards are functionally useless, since they give you nothing that using credit card which you pay off every month wouldn't while costing you quite a bit.
If you have a credit card you pay off every month, you get an interest free loan for a month. You earn points for rewards. You get protection against fraud. You often get warranties on things you wouldn't normally get.
You get NONE of this with a debit card. The only reason a debit card is preferable is if you don't have the self control to spend an amount you can pay off every month, or you have such a bad credit rating you can't get a credit card with a grace period.
How else would you define targeting in this context other than to mean only binding to cancerous cells? It seems you are implying that targeting can only refer to conscious 'aiming', but that is only a subset of things that can be considered targeted.
Targeted can mean 'select as an object of attention or attack'. That is what they are doing when the design a drug.. selecting cancer cells for attack, and then designing the drug so it will only effect those cells. Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_design
Targeted drugs DO mean something specific in pharmacology.
5G! That's like, 25% more G!
Now to counter my own argument (because I like to do that sort of thing):
You are totally stacking the deck by choosing this type of argument, and abusing the particulars of the crime of copyright infringement.
By choosing to compare a world where the download takes place and a world where the downloader was never born, you state that, to the copyright holder, the world is exactly the same. However, it isn't; there exists one less potential customer in the world. Now, you might say that this one customer is such a tiny fraction the world, and anyway the likelihood that he or she would become an actual customer are pretty low. While the chance of this person being a customer, while certainly less than 1, is most likely higher than that of a random person in the world (they show some interest in content by illegally downloading it). Now apply this little thought experiment to ALL downloaders; now the world either has all these people downloading music or all those downloaders were never born. That is a LOT less customers in this new downloaders-never-born world. To act as if the worlds are the same is a bit disingenuous. Whether these damages are greater or less than what is assessed can be argued, but it is not as simple as saying the worlds would be the same.
I don't know if increasing punitive damages to fit our dislike is illogical, or even necessarily a bad idea. Punitive damages DO in some sense measure the strength of the public's dislike for an action; the purpose of establishing punitive damages is to reduce the occurrences of a behavior that society deems undesirable. It makes sense that we would want to more strongly punish actions that we dislike more than actions that we actually like. There is no 'objective', 'purely logical' reason to assign any specific value to punitive damages (otherwise they would be compensatory damages, ie equal to the monetary value of the harm done). Therefore, any argument as to how much punitive damages should be assessed for various infractions would logically be based on how badly society wants to prevent the action from happening.
In the case of illegal filesharing of copyrighted work, it is hard to make an argument that any member of society is suffering a great harm that is higher than the compensatory damages equal to the purchase cost of the downloaded work. In fact, until the illegal downloader is caught, the offended party is unaware that a crime has even taken place! From the "victim's" perspective, the world where the illegal download took place and a world where the downloader had never even been born are absolutely identical. It is hard to make an argument that there should be large punitive damages to prevent something that has such an unnoticeable effect.
Spam, on the other hand, causes people anguish long before the criminal is caught. A world where spam is sent and a world where all the spammers were never born would be a completely different world. Society would certainly notice the difference, and would be much happier in a world where spammers had never been born. It makes perfect logical sense to want to increase the punitive parts of the damages.
Yeah... everyone knows sales tax is multivariable calculus!
This is why I think Lotteries should only be used to fund math education... you will know the funds aren't needed any more when you stop making money.
so THAT is how those MIT guys overcame the mythical man month problem!
Now, if you have a computer that it is impossible for the user to install stuff on, well then you have a much more secure platform.
What you have is a damn iPad
Which is just like scaling a database. Adding slave servers will only get you so far, as each slave still has to read through all the data. Only by sharding can you expand beyond a certain point.
I am a bit confused by your argument. Your 'alternative' measure that you seem to think provides more information is the EXACT same measurement; it is simply the inverse of the ratio. You can simply put a 1 over your MPG if you would prefer to use gallons per mile. Also, your point about a 10 mpg improvement mattering more to a 25mpg vehicle than a 2000 mpg vehicle is merely pointing out that in RATIO measures (which both MPGs and your alternative 'liters per 100kms' are examples of) it is important to measure the PERCENTAGE change rather than the absolute change. Your example would have the exact same result using your alternative measure (only in the reverse case); going from 1000 liters/100km to 990 liters/100km is less of a percentage improvement than going from 12liters/100kms to 2liters/100 kms.
However, this doesn't seem to be the main point you are trying to make. The main point I read is that we should focus on the 'low hanging fruit'; the (correct) notion that we should start by trying to improve the least efficient users of energy first, because each percentage point of improvement in them will save more fuel overall due to their higher initial fuel use age.
It also may be true that it would be helpful to consumers to show them how much money and fuel they would save with each car choice given their driving habits; however, this is done by using on of our ratio measurements to calculate the actual fuel usage given a fixed distance (either multiplying by your liters/km ratio or dividing by MPG). I will grant that your ratio might make it more obvious what this calculation will result in (given that you chose a denominator that you hope is close to the actual number of kms driven), but your measure is still just a ratio.
The last point I would like to make is that MPG is just as good as your liters/100km in determining how much money you will save by switching to a more fuel efficient vehicle. If you double your gas mileage, you will cut your fuel bill in half... it is that simple. This is true no matter how many times you double your MPGs..... although it is also true that the absolute dollar amount of those savings gets smaller and smaller as you move up the fuel efficiency chart.
If only there were people willing to do that work for free...
http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/
http://books.google.com/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0383028/
What is it alluding to?
On Slashdot, we discuss science, technology, and computers (logic machines). Creationism is anti-science and anti-logic. Wouldn't it make sense that posts arguing against science and logic would be modded down on such a site?
Thanks, Cindy Lauper
At those altitudes, wouldn't the fact that the air be EXTREMELY cold? (I think -52c or so at 30k feet?)
I would answer this, but I don't want to get a third whoosh in this thread
You are exactly right. This is for the very same reason that we need to start making encryption standard for everyone; if your scenario was to take place under current circumstances, you would already be under suspicion and under greater focus since most people don't encrypt everything... when everyone encrypts everything, it will finally be the case that no pattern can be deduced from the presence of encrypted data