In Germany's current privacy and data protection laws, everybody has the right to decide what happens to their own personal information if it is being processed by computers.
Well, that is, except for all the ways in which the German government uses that information to track you and spy on you. German privacy attitudes are schizophrenic: they live in a country with a history of governments perpetrating genocidal mass murder based, in large part, on personal information and connections between citizens. You were a Jew? You died. You had contact with communists? You died. The East Germans even continued that proud tradition of neighbors spying on neighbors and kids spying on parents throughout the 20th century.
Yet, all Germans seem concerned about is whether big, evil US corporations can get their data, while everything they do and say can be traced back to them: phones need to be registered, web sites need to provide full information, there is effectively no anonymous free speech, televisions need to be registered, the German government can get all your connection information, and you even register your religion with the German government.
German politicians talking about "privacy" is ridiculous. The "Bundesdatenschutzbeauftragter" is a smokescreen for one of the most intrusive surveillance societies in the world. Germans should worry about their own government before trying to tell other nations about data protection.
Vista also automatically drops reports of problems directly to Microsoft, and isn't dependant on users to supply bug reports or problems like OS X, so when problems occur, MS usually knows before the users or the makers of the software that is causing problmes.
Security problems are not bugs that an automatic bug reporter reports. Neither, for that matter, can automatic bug reporters report usability problems. You're also making the false assumption that Microsoft honestly reports all the bugs they discover. For most of the reports, they probably don't even bother tracking it down. For the ones that they do track down, we already know that if they can fix it quietly and lie about it, they do.
For me, Vista is about as good as XP in terms of applications crashing and BSOD. But Vista usability and security are a nightmare, and no bug statistics are going to tell you that. Vista is a software disaster.
... and that's why the German government collects them, just like all other personal data.
Germany's positions on issues of privacy are rather two-faced, having one of the most intrusive surveillance states in the world, while at the same time proclaiming itself to defend personal freedoms.
But you can make sure that your software doesn't screw the customer if something goes wrong. For example, Apple should have a way of having multiple versions installed and for users to easily up/down-grade to different versions without a full reinstall of the OS.
BTW--A great tool do that with is virtualization.
Even if that were a reasonable answer (rather than a desparate workaround), Apple doesn't permit virtualization.
I don't know what that means. How is one field theory more "overall" than another? People have attempted to apply GR to many more problems than any of the others, but that doesn't make GR any more complete than any of the others.
GR is clearly incorrect because its fundamental assumptions are incompatible with quantum mechanics and quantum mechanical observations. So, whether GR makes incorrect predictions just isn't a question, the only question is where exactly it breaks down.
GR is only one of a large number of possible theories that all make similar predictions for the kinds of phenomena we have actually been able to observe. GR happens to be the one that was first written down, and as long as it worked, there has been no reason to consider any of the others.
I think Jobs and Gates are about equally evil; the big difference is that Jobs packages it better and that Gates is more successful.
And Jobs has an easier task: he doesn't need to build a machine for 90% of the market, only for the 5% that are so disgruntled that they won't be using Windows.
Does an individuals DNA structure change at all through out ones life time?
Not in the sense you probably mean: your DNA does not adapt or "change" during your lifetime. Some cells have some changes to their DNA, either by accident or on purpose, but that generally amounts to inactivating or removing genetic material that a specialized cell won't be needing anymore before its death.
... and it's been kicked around for a long time. There is no reason IBM should get a monopoly on this.
The fact that Friedman thinks that (1) this is innovative, and (2) that the fact that IBM has a monopoly on this helps anybody just shows again what an idiot he is.
Basically, optical scanners can be hacked just as easily as touch screen voting machines, and election officials can easily prevent effective manual recounts.
The only reasonable voting system is one in which all counts are conducted by hand, in public view.
There are some things that don't need to be automated: sex, cooking, hair cutting, and, yes, vote counting.
Fact is, life is a slow form of dying, and regardless of your lifestyle, chances are that you will be dependent on medicine and possibly surgery for the latter part of your life.
Fact is that I won't. Fact is also that if you want to depend on expensive medicines or surgery to eek out a few more miserable years, you should pay for it yourself by taking out your own supplemental insurance. I don't see why I should be forced to finance your folly.
If they don't want people to treat it as an 'unlimited' service, then DON'T CALL IT THAT.
Show me where Comcast actually calls the service "unlimited" without any qualifications.
But even if Comcast's ads were misleading, the consequence is simply that the contract between you and them becomes null and void and they reimburse you for the last month. If that's what you want, just give them a call.
Quantum models of consciousness are so idiotic that they aren't even worth commenting on, and I wonder why Tegmark even bothers.
Other than that, there is no known physical law that prohibits the duplication of people.
The whole discussion reminds me of the kinds of discussions people had when the first flying machines and cars were developed; some people seriously suggested that you'd die if you lift up in the air or drove faster than 25mph.
There is no evidence whatsoever that teleporting people requires teleporting quantum states. Quantum mechanical effects are involved in many biological processes, but only on very short time and spatial scales. If you decohere them all during teleportation, the effect would probably not even be noticeable.
So, all those results on quantum teleportation probably nothing to do with teleporting people. Real teleportation can likely be done purely classically.
Trying to figure out who has what insurance (some insurance is better than other types) and who can afford to pay for more expensive procedures is just bad medicine and bad social responsibility.
Real-world data shows this to be false. Countries that emphasize prevention, regular check-ups, and healthy lifestyles have better health outcomes at much lower cost than the US. Those are the kinds of medical services that people should be given without regard to their ability to pay.
But if you choose to live an unhealthy lifestyle and then need three heart bypasses and a kidney transplant, you should pay for those yourself or accept the consequences of your irresponsibility.
Health care costs are spiraling out of control because medicine sells the illusion that they can fix anything if only paid enough, and people believe those lies and live accordingly.
One of the benefits of open source that we constantly hear is that if any question of the actual behavior of something comes up, the developer can go straight to the source.
Yes, this is an advantage of open source software. Microsoft's software is not open source.
It's fine to look at the source of open source software and target it, it is a very different thing to look at the source of non-open source software and target it.
I agree with you that developers should code to the interface as documented, but if that is the case then most open source developers should not look at the source code for the underlying packages they use.
Most open source developers don't because open source software tends to be much more standards compliant than Microsoft's software, and its developers tend to be much more responsive to requests for making their software standards compliant than Microsoft.
I think MS is doing this to make life simpler for their customers and to cut down on developer support costs.
Obviously. That's because Microsoft has long ago figured out that bad software works out well for them financially: writing a messy and buggy code and then "supporting" platform developers is one of the best strategies for them to tie developers to their platform. Platforms like Wine can easily comply with the documented behavior; it's the undocumented behavior that makes it so hard to come up with an alternative implementation of Windows.
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Most UAVs fly high enough so that there's no chance of a collision. When they fly in regular air space, UAVs avoid you.
In Germany's current privacy and data protection laws, everybody has the right to decide what happens to their own personal information if it is being processed by computers.
Well, that is, except for all the ways in which the German government uses that information to track you and spy on you. German privacy attitudes are schizophrenic: they live in a country with a history of governments perpetrating genocidal mass murder based, in large part, on personal information and connections between citizens. You were a Jew? You died. You had contact with communists? You died. The East Germans even continued that proud tradition of neighbors spying on neighbors and kids spying on parents throughout the 20th century.
Yet, all Germans seem concerned about is whether big, evil US corporations can get their data, while everything they do and say can be traced back to them: phones need to be registered, web sites need to provide full information, there is effectively no anonymous free speech, televisions need to be registered, the German government can get all your connection information, and you even register your religion with the German government.
German politicians talking about "privacy" is ridiculous. The "Bundesdatenschutzbeauftragter" is a smokescreen for one of the most intrusive surveillance societies in the world. Germans should worry about their own government before trying to tell other nations about data protection.
Vista also automatically drops reports of problems directly to Microsoft, and isn't dependant on users to supply bug reports or problems like OS X, so when problems occur, MS usually knows before the users or the makers of the software that is causing problmes.
Security problems are not bugs that an automatic bug reporter reports. Neither, for that matter, can automatic bug reporters report usability problems. You're also making the false assumption that Microsoft honestly reports all the bugs they discover. For most of the reports, they probably don't even bother tracking it down. For the ones that they do track down, we already know that if they can fix it quietly and lie about it, they do.
For me, Vista is about as good as XP in terms of applications crashing and BSOD. But Vista usability and security are a nightmare, and no bug statistics are going to tell you that. Vista is a software disaster.
... and that's why the German government collects them, just like all other personal data.
Germany's positions on issues of privacy are rather two-faced, having one of the most intrusive surveillance states in the world, while at the same time proclaiming itself to defend personal freedoms.
Trying to infer user base from web hits is bullshit.
You can't test every possible edge case
But you can make sure that your software doesn't screw the customer if something goes wrong. For example, Apple should have a way of having multiple versions installed and for users to easily up/down-grade to different versions without a full reinstall of the OS.
BTW--A great tool do that with is virtualization.
Even if that were a reasonable answer (rather than a desparate workaround), Apple doesn't permit virtualization.
There are others? I've never heard of any.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternatives_to_general_relativity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parameterized_post-Newtonian_formalism
At least not as an overall theory.
I don't know what that means. How is one field theory more "overall" than another? People have attempted to apply GR to many more problems than any of the others, but that doesn't make GR any more complete than any of the others.
GR has made several correct predictions that have been tested.
Those predictions turn out to follow from almost any reasonable extension of Newtonian mechanics to relativity.
that would prove GR was incorrect
GR is clearly incorrect because its fundamental assumptions are incompatible with quantum mechanics and quantum mechanical observations. So, whether GR makes incorrect predictions just isn't a question, the only question is where exactly it breaks down.
it would have if the burst was one of the known types.
Or maybe it would not have: nobody has ever detected gravity waves, and they may simply not exist. That's why LIGO was built in the first place.
GR is only one of a large number of possible theories that all make similar predictions for the kinds of phenomena we have actually been able to observe. GR happens to be the one that was first written down, and as long as it worked, there has been no reason to consider any of the others.
What you apparently do not understand is that this device can detect gravitational waves.
That has never been demonstrated. For all we know, gravitational waves may simply not exist.
We are more forgiving of people who aren't more chronically evil, life just is that way, get over it.
But Jobs is chronically evil.
I think Jobs and Gates are about equally evil; the big difference is that Jobs packages it better and that Gates is more successful.
And Jobs has an easier task: he doesn't need to build a machine for 90% of the market, only for the 5% that are so disgruntled that they won't be using Windows.
Does an individuals DNA structure change at all through out ones life time?
Not in the sense you probably mean: your DNA does not adapt or "change" during your lifetime. Some cells have some changes to their DNA, either by accident or on purpose, but that generally amounts to inactivating or removing genetic material that a specialized cell won't be needing anymore before its death.
Oh, goodie, the creator of SPITBOL, the Realia COBOL compiler, and GNU Ada speaks about rigorous CS education!
... and it's been kicked around for a long time. There is no reason IBM should get a monopoly on this.
The fact that Friedman thinks that (1) this is innovative, and (2) that the fact that IBM has a monopoly on this helps anybody just shows again what an idiot he is.
Anybody who thinks that using paper ballots with optical scanners is secure should have a look at "Hacking Democracy":
http://video.google.de/videoplay?docid=4463776866669054201
Basically, optical scanners can be hacked just as easily as touch screen voting machines, and election officials can easily prevent effective manual recounts.
The only reasonable voting system is one in which all counts are conducted by hand, in public view.
There are some things that don't need to be automated: sex, cooking, hair cutting, and, yes, vote counting.
Fact is, life is a slow form of dying, and regardless of your lifestyle, chances are that you will be dependent on medicine and possibly surgery for the latter part of your life.
Fact is that I won't. Fact is also that if you want to depend on expensive medicines or surgery to eek out a few more miserable years, you should pay for it yourself by taking out your own supplemental insurance. I don't see why I should be forced to finance your folly.
Show me where Comcast actually calls the service "unlimited" without any qualifications.
But even if Comcast's ads were misleading, the consequence is simply that the contract between you and them becomes null and void and they reimburse you for the last month. If that's what you want, just give them a call.
Here's the clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fc1SRrDFz8E
Quantum models of consciousness are so idiotic that they aren't even worth commenting on, and I wonder why Tegmark even bothers.
Other than that, there is no known physical law that prohibits the duplication of people.
The whole discussion reminds me of the kinds of discussions people had when the first flying machines and cars were developed; some people seriously suggested that you'd die if you lift up in the air or drove faster than 25mph.
There is no evidence whatsoever that teleporting people requires teleporting quantum states. Quantum mechanical effects are involved in many biological processes, but only on very short time and spatial scales. If you decohere them all during teleportation, the effect would probably not even be noticeable.
So, all those results on quantum teleportation probably nothing to do with teleporting people. Real teleportation can likely be done purely classically.
Trying to figure out who has what insurance (some insurance is better than other types) and who can afford to pay for more expensive procedures is just bad medicine and bad social responsibility.
Real-world data shows this to be false. Countries that emphasize prevention, regular check-ups, and healthy lifestyles have better health outcomes at much lower cost than the US. Those are the kinds of medical services that people should be given without regard to their ability to pay.
But if you choose to live an unhealthy lifestyle and then need three heart bypasses and a kidney transplant, you should pay for those yourself or accept the consequences of your irresponsibility.
Health care costs are spiraling out of control because medicine sells the illusion that they can fix anything if only paid enough, and people believe those lies and live accordingly.
One of the benefits of open source that we constantly hear is that if any question of the actual behavior of something comes up, the developer can go straight to the source.
Yes, this is an advantage of open source software. Microsoft's software is not open source.
It's fine to look at the source of open source software and target it, it is a very different thing to look at the source of non-open source software and target it.
I agree with you that developers should code to the interface as documented, but if that is the case then most open source developers should not look at the source code for the underlying packages they use.
Most open source developers don't because open source software tends to be much more standards compliant than Microsoft's software, and its developers tend to be much more responsive to requests for making their software standards compliant than Microsoft.
I think MS is doing this to make life simpler for their customers and to cut down on developer support costs.
Obviously. That's because Microsoft has long ago figured out that bad software works out well for them financially: writing a messy and buggy code and then "supporting" platform developers is one of the best strategies for them to tie developers to their platform. Platforms like Wine can easily comply with the documented behavior; it's the undocumented behavior that makes it so hard to come up with an alternative implementation of Windows.