A simple wall-shaped opponent pressed right against the net, with a large enough surface area, will beat any opponent.
And building a chess program to beat any opponent is pretty simple, by making all the computers pieces queen king mixtures, so they move like queens but the computer only loses if *all* its remaining pieces are in checkmate at once.
But it's generally only interesting when you restrict the computer to actually following the rules of the game.
Maybe that's why I used the word "if" at the appropriate point in my post.
I'm just arguing that the original "good for the economy" argument isn't necessarily true. Making something locally is not always better for the economy than buying ot from overseas. It depends on a lot of factors, all of which were ignored in the original post.
All trade theories assume that trade is viable and that if both parties benefit they will trade. Of course the real world isn't like that.
But no, I was talking about society (well the economy) as a whole. If a foreign country has a comparative advantage with reepect to some product then it is economically beneficial to trade with them.
Things like transportation costs, national pride, security issues, and so on mean that the real world is a little different. But if America has a comparitive advantage to Europe when it comes to software then the "economy boost" argument is incorrect (with respect to trade theories - in the long term it may result in Europe gaining the comparative advantage in the long term...)
What you describe is absolute advantage, which is a very different beast to comparative advantage. Comparative advantage tells us that even if they can create the software cheaper, they may still be better of trading for it - if the opportunity cost is lower elsewhere.
For example (a very much simplified and unrealistic one at that), if each European worker can produce 4 units of software or 3 units of cheese for some unit of time/production cost/whatever. While American workers can produce 2 units of software or 1 units of cheese for the same production metric.
Comparative advantage says that even though Europe has an absolute advantage in both items, they will be better of trading cheese for software with America due to the differences in opportunity cost. Each unit of software Europe produces "costs" them 0.75 units of cheese, whereas America can produce a unit of software at the "cost" of only 0.5 units of cheese.
Perhaps you should learn just a tiny bit of economics.
You know comparative advantage and all that. The benefits of trade, and how trading (including buying stuff from foreign countries) is actually a positive thing for the local economy.
Then again Europe isn't exactly famous for getting involved in fair trading, preferring the tarrif and subsidy approach on a massive scale (not that the US isn't just as bad...)
Very true, and it's also true that on the moon's spin makes it such that one side is always facing the sun. Why, if you were to put a solar array up there, you would be talking about having 24/7 sunlight for it. That would be great, if you lived on the moon...
Since one side of the moon always faces the earth (being tadally locked), and yet we still have phases off the moon, in which that side changes from completely lit up to completely dark, it is bloody obvious that the moon in fact does not have one side that always faces the sun.
The day length on the moon is ~28 days (obviously from the length of time between full moons). Two weeks of daylight would be great for solar power (as would the lack of atmosphere), the two weeks of night would be a little inconveniant though.
Hopefully the "sue everyone" mentallity will come to play":
"I placed a bid on ebay which missed the deadline due to the router not sending the request to ebay, because of this I am very sad and deserve $5 million."
"My university assignment missed the deadline because my before deadline submission was intercepted by the router and intentionally not sent to the university submission web site. Because of this my average mark is lower and I will miss out on my favoured medical speciality. This will result in my lifetime earnings being reduced by $50 million."
Or you can simply release the code to a linux driver under a GPL compatible license and the various distributions will do the binary creation and distribution for you, free of charge even.
No, they chose to protest against something they could change.
Their web site protest will have no effect on Zimbabwe, China, or Iran.
However, a significant number of Apple's customers use use a web browser to look at web sites, and hence there protest may cause some Apple customers to change their purchasing habits, and let Apple know why. That in turn could cause Apple's behaviour to change.
Assumming they are US citizens or that some US citizens view their web page, then their protest may let an intern browsing the web see their opinion and report it to their political master. Or the viewers may change their voting habits and let the political parties know why. That in turn could change government policy.
Sure, there protest might be innefective in practice. But at least there is some way it could actually be effective, so in theory it is sound. Protesting about "land reform" in Zimbabwe isn't going to change anything, in theory or practice.
Maybe they protested against the things which affected them or which they thought they might actually influence.
Since they aim at Mac OS X users Apple's DMCA use might affect them and their users. And the USA is a democracy in which such protests theoretically might change government policy.
Zimbabwe, China, and Iran are not democracies (well not ones where people can vote how they want and have it counted) and hence blacking out a web site isn't going to do anything to them. You need to stand in front of tanks (and get run over by them) and spend decades in jail to influence such powers.
Blacking out a website is pretty pointless, but as part of a larger protest might achieve something... maybe...
In the 1999 state election (NSW, Australia), in which voting is done with pencil and paper I wrote the numbers 1 through 264 on my senate ballot.
That seems like more than just one choice, and pencil and paper worked just fine, thanks.
Strangely enough I don't mind waiting the weeks it takes to determine who gets that last senate seat (proportional voting makes for lots of counting), speed isn't the issue. Accuracy and resistance to corruption are much more important.
And more people means more voters, but it also means more counters. And since voting isn't compulsary over there, there should be a higher ratio of willing counters to voters.
Or you could just register the copyright and use the existing institution (or the equivalent in your jurisdiction) that has been doing that task since before computers were invented.
Of course registering every cvs checkin is going to get expensive:)
I see door to soor sales people at about the same rate as you. Unless you include those damn jehova's witness people... The wife invited one in once when she bored at home, and they just kept coming back - when I was at home and she wasn't.
They seem to have stopped coming a few months ago now, maybe because I started answering the door nude...
Email addressed to numerous places ends up in my mailbox (sholden@*.cs.usyd.edu.au, sholden@*.cs.su.oz.au, and a bunch more).
Such addresses have been active since 1995 or so...
They are non-munged on my web pages, in my usenet posts, and so on.
My filter gets rid of essentially all of it (occassionaly something gets through when a new style of spam occurs but the filter quickly learns and catches them too). If I didn't filter my email would be completely unusable - I'd never find the real email amongst the garbage.
It has to do with volume and ability to slam doors.
Everyone would prefer one spam a day over one door-to-door salesperson a day. And everyone would prefer 500 spams a day over 500 door-to-door salepeople a day.
But those aren't the choices. I get one door-to-door person a month or so. I get 25000 spams a month or so. Yes, I'd prefer one saleperson knocking on my door, to the 25000 spam emails.
Plus I am powerless against spam, I can send abuse reports but that has no observable effect. With a door-to-door salesperson I can slam the door in their face, I can yell abuse, I can call the police if they visit 25000 times a month.
So yes, I am more annoyed with spam than with door-to-door salespeople.
However, complaining isn't what I was referring to, I said "campaigning". I was referring to their attempts to get the Government to reduce the powers of the ACCC.
I think there are also plenty of examples to show where the ACCC doesn't seem to achieve their goals. If they were so powerful and effective, would we really have the outrageous banking costs that we have? Would Telstra get away with half the stuff it does?
Of course they don't succeed at everything they set out to do. Sometimes the companies are actually in the right and there was no infringement of regulation. Sometimes the law isn't "strong" enough and makes it virtually impossible to convict (having to . Sometimes the evidence just can't be found.
They aren't all powerful.
Do you also think the police aren't "effective" because there are some unsolved crimes.
Slashdot Mirror
You can't use images. That would preclude use by blind people (American's with Disabilities Act)
Except that all you are doing is comparing if two images are the same. That can be done by a machine.
Let blind people use printers that make black pixels raised so they can check by touch if they want...
A simple wall-shaped opponent pressed right against the net, with a large enough surface area, will beat any opponent.
And building a chess program to beat any opponent is pretty simple, by making all the computers pieces queen king mixtures, so they move like queens but the computer only loses if *all* its remaining pieces are in checkmate at once.
But it's generally only interesting when you restrict the computer to actually following the rules of the game.
Maybe that's why I used the word "if" at the appropriate point in my post.
I'm just arguing that the original "good for the economy" argument isn't necessarily true. Making something locally is not always better for the economy than buying ot from overseas. It depends on a lot of factors, all of which were ignored in the original post.
All trade theories assume that trade is viable and that if both parties benefit they will trade. Of course the real world isn't like that.
But no, I was talking about society (well the economy) as a whole. If a foreign country has a comparative advantage with reepect to some product then it is economically beneficial to trade with them.
Things like transportation costs, national pride, security issues, and so on mean that the real world is a little different. But if America has a comparitive advantage to Europe when it comes to software then the "economy boost" argument is incorrect (with respect to trade theories - in the long term it may result in Europe gaining the comparative advantage in the long term...)
What you describe is absolute advantage, which is a very different beast to comparative advantage. Comparative advantage tells us that even if they can create the software cheaper, they may still be better of trading for it - if the opportunity cost is lower elsewhere.
For example (a very much simplified and unrealistic one at that), if each European worker can produce 4 units of software or 3 units of cheese for some unit of time/production cost/whatever. While American workers can produce 2 units of software or 1 units of cheese for the same production metric.
Comparative advantage says that even though Europe has an absolute advantage in both items, they will be better of trading cheese for software with America due to the differences in opportunity cost. Each unit of software Europe produces "costs" them 0.75 units of cheese, whereas America can produce a unit of software at the "cost" of only 0.5 units of cheese.
Perhaps you should learn just a tiny bit of economics.
You know comparative advantage and all that. The benefits of trade, and how trading (including buying stuff from foreign countries) is actually a positive thing for the local economy.
Then again Europe isn't exactly famous for getting involved in fair trading, preferring the tarrif and subsidy approach on a massive scale (not that the US isn't just as bad...)
Are we supposed to believe that these guys, using a site running from a suburban bedroom, managed to share 60Tb of data?
I believe the web site in the suburban bedroom just hosted links to the actual music files.
The files themselves were stored on various machines (university web servers, for example) which in total could easily have pushed that much data.
It was essentially a index to external files. At least that was my impression back in May hen this case first hit the papers.
Very true, and it's also true that on the moon's spin makes it such that one side is always facing the sun. Why, if you were to put a solar array up there, you would be talking about having 24/7 sunlight for it. That would be great, if you lived on the moon...
Since one side of the moon always faces the earth (being tadally locked), and yet we still have phases off the moon, in which that side changes from completely lit up to completely dark, it is bloody obvious that the moon in fact does not have one side that always faces the sun.
The day length on the moon is ~28 days (obviously from the length of time between full moons). Two weeks of daylight would be great for solar power (as would the lack of atmosphere), the two weeks of night would be a little inconveniant though.
Hopefully the "sue everyone" mentallity will come to play":
"I placed a bid on ebay which missed the deadline due to the router not sending the request to ebay, because of this I am very sad and deserve $5 million."
"My university assignment missed the deadline because my before deadline submission was intercepted by the router and intentionally not sent to the university submission web site. Because of this my average mark is lower and I will miss out on my favoured medical speciality. This will result in my lifetime earnings being reduced by $50 million."
I realise this is a big call, but you are the dumbest person I have ever read a slashdot post by.
Or you can simply release the code to a linux driver under a GPL compatible license and the various distributions will do the binary creation and distribution for you, free of charge even.
No, they chose to protest against something they could change.
Their web site protest will have no effect on Zimbabwe, China, or Iran.
However, a significant number of Apple's customers use use a web browser to look at web sites, and hence there protest may cause some Apple customers to change their purchasing habits, and let Apple know why. That in turn could cause Apple's behaviour to change.
Assumming they are US citizens or that some US citizens view their web page, then their protest may let an intern browsing the web see their opinion and report it to their political master. Or the viewers may change their voting habits and let the political parties know why. That in turn could change government policy.
Sure, there protest might be innefective in practice. But at least there is some way it could actually be effective, so in theory it is sound. Protesting about "land reform" in Zimbabwe isn't going to change anything, in theory or practice.
Maybe they protested against the things which affected them or which they thought they might actually influence.
Since they aim at Mac OS X users Apple's DMCA use might affect them and their users. And the USA is a democracy in which such protests theoretically might change government policy.
Zimbabwe, China, and Iran are not democracies (well not ones where people can vote how they want and have it counted) and hence blacking out a web site isn't going to do anything to them. You need to stand in front of tanks (and get run over by them) and spend decades in jail to influence such powers.
Blacking out a website is pretty pointless, but as part of a larger protest might achieve something... maybe...
In the 1999 state election (NSW, Australia), in which voting is done with pencil and paper I wrote the numbers 1 through 264 on my senate ballot.
That seems like more than just one choice, and pencil and paper worked just fine, thanks.
Strangely enough I don't mind waiting the weeks it takes to determine who gets that last senate seat (proportional voting makes for lots of counting), speed isn't the issue. Accuracy and resistance to corruption are much more important.
And more people means more voters, but it also means more counters. And since voting isn't compulsary over there, there should be a higher ratio of willing counters to voters.
Actually, it's just occured to me that you're American?
See domain name of the URL associated with the slashdot account.
Not only an Anonymous Coward, but a Retarded Anonymous Coward.
I was amazed they had electricity, let alone "the internet".
Since the US dollar tumbled recently, those jokes just aren't as funny.
A year ago AU$1.5 million AUD was US$10 or so. "these days" though, it's worth a little over US$1 million.
What I find humorous about the story is that it happened in Nyngan, of all places.
It's those machines on Titan, I tell you, those pesky Others, still causing problems millenia later.
We need to be sending people to Titan to study those damn machines. We can't let the "Others" destroy us as well...
Or you could just register the copyright and use the existing institution (or the equivalent in your jurisdiction) that has been doing that task since before computers were invented.
:)
Of course registering every cvs checkin is going to get expensive
I see door to soor sales people at about the same rate as you. Unless you include those damn jehova's witness people... The wife invited one in once when she bored at home, and they just kept coming back - when I was at home and she wasn't.
They seem to have stopped coming a few months ago now, maybe because I started answering the door nude...
Email addressed to numerous places ends up in my mailbox (sholden@*.cs.usyd.edu.au, sholden@*.cs.su.oz.au, and a bunch more).
Such addresses have been active since 1995 or so...
They are non-munged on my web pages, in my usenet posts, and so on.
My filter gets rid of essentially all of it (occassionaly something gets through when a new style of spam occurs but the filter quickly learns and catches them too). If I didn't filter my email would be completely unusable - I'd never find the real email amongst the garbage.
It has to do with volume and ability to slam doors.
Everyone would prefer one spam a day over one door-to-door salesperson a day. And everyone would prefer 500 spams a day over 500 door-to-door salepeople a day.
But those aren't the choices. I get one door-to-door person a month or so. I get 25000 spams a month or so. Yes, I'd prefer one saleperson knocking on my door, to the 25000 spam emails.
Plus I am powerless against spam, I can send abuse reports but that has no observable effect. With a door-to-door salesperson I can slam the door in their face, I can yell abuse, I can call the police if they visit 25000 times a month.
So yes, I am more annoyed with spam than with door-to-door salespeople.
Except of course for the word "secretly" in that definition. It's hardly a secret, since it is stated in a nice bulleted list in the EULA.
Much of the complaining was about publicity.
That's true.
However, complaining isn't what I was referring to, I said "campaigning". I was referring to their attempts to get the Government to reduce the powers of the ACCC.
I think there are also plenty of examples to show where the ACCC doesn't seem to achieve their goals. If they were so powerful and effective, would we really have the outrageous banking costs that we have? Would Telstra get away with half the stuff it does?
Of course they don't succeed at everything they set out to do. Sometimes the companies are actually in the right and there was no infringement of regulation. Sometimes the law isn't "strong" enough and makes it virtually impossible to convict (having to . Sometimes the evidence just can't be found.
They aren't all powerful.
Do you also think the police aren't "effective" because there are some unsolved crimes.