If someone wants to use my identity to frame me for a crime then they're just going to encounter a mountain of evidence from numerous sources which contradict their fabrication.
"My G1 was on a Starbucks Wifi at the time of the crime. I used my CC to purchase the drink. I received a text from a nearby tower. I posted a comment on breaking news story that is written in my style of writing. I was seen on 8 security cameras walking to the starbucks from my car. I used an automatic toll card 5 miles away from the coffee shop...." Good luck coming up with a large mountain of evidence to put me somewhere else.
This is how it works: $10,000 and 2 months in jail later, your lawyer will offer to hire a private investigator for another $10,000 to try to find the people you need to subpoena to get that information.
Supposedly, attempting to create something perfect would be an affront to Allah, who is the only being who is perfect and who can create perfection.
Then surely the deliberate introduction of such flaws is the height of arrogance? They are assuming that they could have attained perfection, whereas even a rug that would be perfect to the human eye, is obviously little better than a puke-stained rag in the sight of Allah. He is truly merciful not to smite them most smite-ily for their presumption that they could even comprehend the nature of rug-perfection, let alone attain it!
OK, fine, it is the height of arrogance. Just so long as you buy that the flaw is deliberate...
The more cynical part of me wonders if Linus is doing that on purpose, to reduce competition? Make it a pain to maintain a forked kernel, and people will improve mainline. Of course that also means that desktop users are stuck with data center optimizations, but it also keeps them from having good alternatives, so Linux usage will keep on growing.
Well, but isn't it the case that almost nobody who uses Linux uses Linus's kernel? I mean for example all the people who use Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, etc. distributions, which have their kernel patch sets. In fact what happens is that incompatibilities with such patches only slow adoption by these distributions (and thus by the vast majority of users) of the newer kernel releases from Linus. If Linus has such a plan as you describe, it does not work.
I can't see why you think I am "forgetting" something. You seem a little confused though when you say "its rarity and corrosion resistance is exactly what made it valuable as a monetary exchange token." Metals are easily divisible and easily comparable (through weight), that's what makes them suitable for exchange, use as collateral, etc., (most metals in coins through history were not rare or corrosion resistant like precious metals) but coins are not "tokens" -- the metal has to be valued before it can be used for exchange, or else nobody would have any reason to accept it in the first place. In the case of say bronze you have a metal coin that can be made into a sword or a plow or tool: this is the basis of the value of bronze coins. In the case of gold you have a metal coin that can be made into conspicuous consumption "bling" for the king and his emulators: this is the basis of the value of gold coins.
The fact that you find so much gold in vaults rather than in jewelry [or electronics] is a result of a centuries-long "speculative bubble" in gold prices. Or as I call it, a "popular delusion." Similar principle for fiat currencies. Ultimately those bank notes are indeed worth nothing more than toilet paper: just wait 1,000 years. (Maybe it'll be a collector's item;)) History suggests that the gold bubble will last longer than the bubble propping up any specific government's checks, but nothing lasts forever. The last two people on earth will have little reason to accept gold from one another in exchange for anything.
Expertise won't get you anywhere. Think about it as if you're being hired by a five-year-old. He doesn't know C. He doesn't know what RAM is. All he knows is whether you make him cry or laugh. All your advanced knowledge of the state of the art in cryptographic algorithms is useless when you are being judged by a five-year-old. All that matters is how well you kiss ass. Anyway, that's the worst case. If you're quite lucky, you'll get someone who has the competence to recognize your contribution (if he reads the source code: which itself is unlikely). But seriously, that is pretty rare. Think about it: have you any clue who is responsible for the Linux kernel? If you're honest with yourself, you admit that you know Linus Torvalds and maybe Andrew Morton or Alan Cox -- but really, you have no clue. Too many anonymous contributors, far too much to review. So it goes. Your boss will equally have little idea who is truly responsible (whether for the good or the bad).
A better characteristic descriptor would probably be "socially clueless". I know a lot of guys who come across harsh - myself included. They are usually some of the most open people I've known; they're also very amiable - but havent' a clue how to relate to others unlike themselves.
Most people haven't a clue how to relate to others unlike themselves. It's just that for most people, the unlike are a minority (who are unimportant and can be ignored). For the unusually intelligent, the unlike are a majority (who have all the power). Since the majority has the power to define the problem, the problem has to lie within the psyche of the intelligent minority: it is always the minority which must adjust itself and learn to relate to the majority. There is no reciprocity here.
It's true that gold has its uses, but these are not what determine its market price -- it was just as expensive long before such uses were discovered. Indeed, if gold were economical to use, the majority of it would be used; instead, the majority of it is kept in vaults, in the form of bullion. It is valued -- and priced -- according to an expectation of future trade, rather than an expectation of use. And such expectation of trade is realistic enough, if the last two millenia are anything to go by. (Maybe not.)
Gold can be traded for many things, since it is so highly regarded by certain powerful humans, but rocket fuel can be converted into mechanical force with great efficiency, independently of anyone's opinions. The former fact is the consequence of certain social circumstances which are at least somewhat fragile; the latter fact is a consequence of the basic principles of physics. That's all I mean.
(I freely admit that if a man says he prefers shiny things to mechanical power, there's no factual error involved.)
An interesting consequence, if Mars was indeed solid gold and it was economical to bring back the gold: eventually [in fact, probably very quickly] an equilibrium would be reached, as rocket fuel prices went up and gold prices went down. Ultimately this would be quite a loss for humanity, since the value of gold is something of a popular delusion, while the value of rocket fuel is more in the nature of objective physical fact.
get compiled by dynamic languages and lead to an runtime error: method baar() not found! I make such typos in the hundrets a day, if I was forced to use languages like python I would hang myself.
I have seen little evidence that static typing is all that useful in a general purpose programming language.
Static typing means that the compiler knows the type of every value. This allows the compiler to produce faster code. In particular, it allows the compiler to avoid a layer of indirection through a pointer. By contrast, in traditional implementations of LISP, all variables except integers are represented as pointers: that is why LISP is (or is reputed to be) slow. Moreover, the type of the value (even integer values) is represented in the data, and must be checked. The more information the compiler has about typing, the more of those pointers and checks can be eliminated, thus the less code and less memory access is necessary to get data into a register. In the ideal case, the data is put into a register directly through the assembly produced by the compiler. That's going to happen all the time with C; it won't happen in a dynamically typed language unless a lot of work has gone into optimizations (meaning, generally, "whole program analysis") or the programmer specifies additional type information for the compiler.
So, the point of static typing is not to help you, the programmer; it is to help your compiler.
The problem is that 90% of people who consider themselves "introverts" are actually just nerds with no social skills. The reason they don't enjoy interaction with others is because they're not any good at it. The cure for this, of course, is to go out, socialize, meet people, and develop their social skills.
No, the "cure" is to learn social skills during childhood and adolescence, like everyone else. Those are the times when one is emerged in [at least the institutionalized simulacrum of] actual society. To enter the crowd of strangers and "meet people" is a task requiring social skills -- rather advanced ones (viz., the "cold approach"), well beyond mere "extroversion" -- it is a poor way to acquire social skills.
But, hey, I don't want to discourage anyone. You might get lucky. It's just the responsibilization that bothers me. General principle: people don't have problems with easy solutions that they don't implement because they are stubborn and foolish; that's just a way of blaming them for their problems (while putting on the pretense that you don't have them because you're superior).
You make the presumption that there is a choice to be made between availability and inavailability. But that is not the choice to be made. Regarding the question of drug legalization, the choice is between prosecuting or not, and prosecuting exactly who, and doing what with them afterward?
the war on drugs, when it comes to meth, heroin, or coke, is still better than accepting these 3 hardcore addictive drugs into society Everyone can agree that addiction to these drugs should be fought. But the question is: How? Is prohibition (courts, prisons) the best mechanism?
You make a good point, although orthogonal to mine. I should have said that one supports the laws that benefit one's interests. One might have an interest in eliminating poverty, or fighting AIDS, or supporting the arts, or education, etc., quite irrespective of actual benefit to oneself.
College students also tend to be partial to socialism, too - until they start earning a living and take a look at the taxes deducted from their paychecks. Same principle applies.... Taxes on wages have very little to do with socialism. Those who do not own businesses, but work for them, have very little reason to oppose taxes on owning businesses which redistribute that ownership to their workers. That is the vast majority of people. In the USA, the closest thing to "socialism" is redistribution of wealth among workers which is not at all what people who call themselves "socialists" are concerned with.
The moral of the story is that your personal morals are at least in part a product of your own experience and view of the world. Most college students have a very narrow view of the world, being young and having yet to start the main working phase of their lives, so it's not surprising that their views on ethical issues like copyright infringement come from a one-sided perspective. That is a strange moral to take from it. I would see the moral as this: politics is war by other means. One supports the law that benefits oneself. The students support the laws that benefit students; the workers support laws that benefit workers; the business owners support laws that benefit owners; heirs-to-be support the reduction of death taxes; those who will not inherit support the increase of death taxes; etc..
I think perhaps you misunderstand. I did not express any attitude, I only made a statement of fact.
The domain of property is necessarily at most the domain of the enforcement of exclusivity. At a certain point in human history, it was impossible to enforce exclusive access to land; before that, land in general was not--could not be--under the domain of property. Then this changed: fences were constructed, and the commons were enclosed. At a certain point in human history, it became feasible to enforce restrictions in the use of (some) airspace and ocean space, and only at that time did it become possible for such things to be property. Currently, there is a recognition that pollution into the air must be curbed, and there is talk of bringing emissions into the domain of property; but since enforcement of the exclusive right to pollute is not currently technically feasible, "pollution credits" are simply impossible (for now). Pollution is not (currently) within the domain of property. This is a matter of technical fact; legislation cannot change it (except perhaps by funding new technology).
Technohistory has for the most part expanded the domain of property with time, but in the case of information there has been an unusual reversal. Copying is now more possible than it once was, and its prohibition less feasible. The intellectual property rights of the copyright holder owe to their very existence the possibility of restricting copying, and this possibility is now in serious doubt. One can bitch and moan about this, much as one can bitch and moan about the fact that land is property; but that changes nothing. If exclusivity can be enforced, there is property; if it cannot, there is no property; and this is a matter of technical fact, not law.
Of course, it's not actually true that the people who in the 60s had a laid-back attitude toward drug use are those that are now in power. Or if they are, they at least do not have the power even to admit as much.
If you don't like the use that people make of copies of what you have created, you have one valid option: prevent them from doing so. But validity does not amount to possibility.
I'm not sure young people even believe in "rights" anymore. Rights are a mystical concept, like souls or free will. That kind of thing is passé. Sure, people still talk about "rights," but most of the time they speak of them as if they are nothing more than social conventions; as if (for example) the right to free speech is something that the Bill of Rights created, and which didn't exist (say) in the USSR. Thus, the "right" of musicians to control who listens to their music is nothing more than the social practice of preventing people from listening to music without permission. And as that social practice is not in fact possible, people who don't believe in "natural rights" will consequently conclude that such a right does not exist, as a simple matter of fact.
PS. The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows, "Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody."
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This is how it works: $10,000 and 2 months in jail later, your lawyer will offer to hire a private investigator for another $10,000 to try to find the people you need to subpoena to get that information.
Supposedly, attempting to create something perfect would be an affront to Allah, who is the only being who is perfect and who can create perfection.
Then surely the deliberate introduction of such flaws is the height of arrogance? They are assuming that they could have attained perfection, whereas even a rug that would be perfect to the human eye, is obviously little better than a puke-stained rag in the sight of Allah. He is truly merciful not to smite them most smite-ily for their presumption that they could even comprehend the nature of rug-perfection, let alone attain it!
OK, fine, it is the height of arrogance. Just so long as you buy that the flaw is deliberate...
Regardless of the "market", there sure are a lot of desktop machines in physical existence with fewer than 16 cpus.
Why pay good money to inform consumers when one can assume "perfect information" as a premise, for free?
Well, but isn't it the case that almost nobody who uses Linux uses Linus's kernel? I mean for example all the people who use Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, etc. distributions, which have their kernel patch sets. In fact what happens is that incompatibilities with such patches only slow adoption by these distributions (and thus by the vast majority of users) of the newer kernel releases from Linus. If Linus has such a plan as you describe, it does not work.
I can't see why you think I am "forgetting" something. You seem a little confused though when you say "its rarity and corrosion resistance is exactly what made it valuable as a monetary exchange token." Metals are easily divisible and easily comparable (through weight), that's what makes them suitable for exchange, use as collateral, etc., (most metals in coins through history were not rare or corrosion resistant like precious metals) but coins are not "tokens" -- the metal has to be valued before it can be used for exchange, or else nobody would have any reason to accept it in the first place. In the case of say bronze you have a metal coin that can be made into a sword or a plow or tool: this is the basis of the value of bronze coins. In the case of gold you have a metal coin that can be made into conspicuous consumption "bling" for the king and his emulators: this is the basis of the value of gold coins.
The fact that you find so much gold in vaults rather than in jewelry [or electronics] is a result of a centuries-long "speculative bubble" in gold prices. Or as I call it, a "popular delusion." Similar principle for fiat currencies. Ultimately those bank notes are indeed worth nothing more than toilet paper: just wait 1,000 years. (Maybe it'll be a collector's item ;)) History suggests that the gold bubble will last longer than the bubble propping up any specific government's checks, but nothing lasts forever. The last two people on earth will have little reason to accept gold from one another in exchange for anything.
Expertise won't get you anywhere. Think about it as if you're being hired by a five-year-old. He doesn't know C. He doesn't know what RAM is. All he knows is whether you make him cry or laugh. All your advanced knowledge of the state of the art in cryptographic algorithms is useless when you are being judged by a five-year-old. All that matters is how well you kiss ass. Anyway, that's the worst case. If you're quite lucky, you'll get someone who has the competence to recognize your contribution (if he reads the source code: which itself is unlikely). But seriously, that is pretty rare. Think about it: have you any clue who is responsible for the Linux kernel? If you're honest with yourself, you admit that you know Linus Torvalds and maybe Andrew Morton or Alan Cox -- but really, you have no clue. Too many anonymous contributors, far too much to review. So it goes. Your boss will equally have little idea who is truly responsible (whether for the good or the bad).
Most people haven't a clue how to relate to others unlike themselves. It's just that for most people, the unlike are a minority (who are unimportant and can be ignored). For the unusually intelligent, the unlike are a majority (who have all the power). Since the majority has the power to define the problem, the problem has to lie within the psyche of the intelligent minority: it is always the minority which must adjust itself and learn to relate to the majority. There is no reciprocity here.
It's true that gold has its uses, but these are not what determine its market price -- it was just as expensive long before such uses were discovered. Indeed, if gold were economical to use, the majority of it would be used; instead, the majority of it is kept in vaults, in the form of bullion. It is valued -- and priced -- according to an expectation of future trade, rather than an expectation of use. And such expectation of trade is realistic enough, if the last two millenia are anything to go by. (Maybe not.)
Gold can be traded for many things, since it is so highly regarded by certain powerful humans, but rocket fuel can be converted into mechanical force with great efficiency, independently of anyone's opinions. The former fact is the consequence of certain social circumstances which are at least somewhat fragile; the latter fact is a consequence of the basic principles of physics. That's all I mean.
(I freely admit that if a man says he prefers shiny things to mechanical power, there's no factual error involved.)
An interesting consequence, if Mars was indeed solid gold and it was economical to bring back the gold: eventually [in fact, probably very quickly] an equilibrium would be reached, as rocket fuel prices went up and gold prices went down. Ultimately this would be quite a loss for humanity, since the value of gold is something of a popular delusion, while the value of rocket fuel is more in the nature of objective physical fact.
That's assuming an even distribution of mutations across the genome, which is not the case.
http://www.google.com/search?q="used only once: possible typo at"
Static typing means that the compiler knows the type of every value. This allows the compiler to produce faster code. In particular, it allows the compiler to avoid a layer of indirection through a pointer. By contrast, in traditional implementations of LISP, all variables except integers are represented as pointers: that is why LISP is (or is reputed to be) slow. Moreover, the type of the value (even integer values) is represented in the data, and must be checked. The more information the compiler has about typing, the more of those pointers and checks can be eliminated, thus the less code and less memory access is necessary to get data into a register. In the ideal case, the data is put into a register directly through the assembly produced by the compiler. That's going to happen all the time with C; it won't happen in a dynamically typed language unless a lot of work has gone into optimizations (meaning, generally, "whole program analysis") or the programmer specifies additional type information for the compiler.
So, the point of static typing is not to help you, the programmer; it is to help your compiler.
No, the "cure" is to learn social skills during childhood and adolescence, like everyone else. Those are the times when one is emerged in [at least the institutionalized simulacrum of] actual society. To enter the crowd of strangers and "meet people" is a task requiring social skills -- rather advanced ones (viz., the "cold approach"), well beyond mere "extroversion" -- it is a poor way to acquire social skills.
But, hey, I don't want to discourage anyone. You might get lucky. It's just the responsibilization that bothers me. General principle: people don't have problems with easy solutions that they don't implement because they are stubborn and foolish; that's just a way of blaming them for their problems (while putting on the pretense that you don't have them because you're superior).
You make the presumption that there is a choice to be made between availability and inavailability. But that is not the choice to be made. Regarding the question of drug legalization, the choice is between prosecuting or not, and prosecuting exactly who, and doing what with them afterward?
You make a good point, although orthogonal to mine. I should have said that one supports the laws that benefit one's interests. One might have an interest in eliminating poverty, or fighting AIDS, or supporting the arts, or education, etc., quite irrespective of actual benefit to oneself.
I think perhaps you misunderstand. I did not express any attitude, I only made a statement of fact.
The domain of property is necessarily at most the domain of the enforcement of exclusivity. At a certain point in human history, it was impossible to enforce exclusive access to land; before that, land in general was not--could not be--under the domain of property. Then this changed: fences were constructed, and the commons were enclosed. At a certain point in human history, it became feasible to enforce restrictions in the use of (some) airspace and ocean space, and only at that time did it become possible for such things to be property. Currently, there is a recognition that pollution into the air must be curbed, and there is talk of bringing emissions into the domain of property; but since enforcement of the exclusive right to pollute is not currently technically feasible, "pollution credits" are simply impossible (for now). Pollution is not (currently) within the domain of property. This is a matter of technical fact; legislation cannot change it (except perhaps by funding new technology).
Technohistory has for the most part expanded the domain of property with time, but in the case of information there has been an unusual reversal. Copying is now more possible than it once was, and its prohibition less feasible. The intellectual property rights of the copyright holder owe to their very existence the possibility of restricting copying, and this possibility is now in serious doubt. One can bitch and moan about this, much as one can bitch and moan about the fact that land is property; but that changes nothing. If exclusivity can be enforced, there is property; if it cannot, there is no property; and this is a matter of technical fact, not law.
Of course, it's not actually true that the people who in the 60s had a laid-back attitude toward drug use are those that are now in power. Or if they are, they at least do not have the power even to admit as much.
If you don't like the use that people make of copies of what you have created, you have one valid option: prevent them from doing so. But validity does not amount to possibility.
I'm not sure young people even believe in "rights" anymore. Rights are a mystical concept, like souls or free will. That kind of thing is passé. Sure, people still talk about "rights," but most of the time they speak of them as if they are nothing more than social conventions; as if (for example) the right to free speech is something that the Bill of Rights created, and which didn't exist (say) in the USSR. Thus, the "right" of musicians to control who listens to their music is nothing more than the social practice of preventing people from listening to music without permission. And as that social practice is not in fact possible, people who don't believe in "natural rights" will consequently conclude that such a right does not exist, as a simple matter of fact.
PS. The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows, "Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody."