The distinction you describe makes no sense. It's an electronic exchange, so computers are involved. So you say human should push the button to do a trade - fine; what if I want to do a portfolio of different stocks - do I have to press the button for each stock separately or am I allowed to press the button once? Now what if I want to split a big trade into multiple small trades over the course of the day to minimize market impact - should I be sitting there, watching a clock and pressing that button every so often? Don't you think that's silly?
So what exactly are you proposing to ban? Humans using computers to carry out pre-defined series of actions on request? That's all automated trading is. Of course there is a human somewhere at each legal entity that enters into trades on exchanges, who bears responsibility over what trades are done and controls what sofware runs when, so ultimately 'pushes the button' - or do you think the software trades on its own account without humans involved?
> Rather than expecting joy from a woman, I've come to simply not expecting joy for any reason really.
That's your real problem I think. Your vibe matters more than anything else when picking up, certainly more than anything you do or say. I've had a really hard time picking up women until I was about 30, and these days it just happens. The main thing that changed is simply that I'm comfortable with who I am and (this is very important) look at the interaction as one where I offer them something (my company, to begin with) rather than one where I want something from them. That's a fundamental difference in mental posture that makes all the difference in how people react to you. Secondly most of the flirting happens in the tone of voice and body language, took me a while to learn to ignore the actual words (well you have to not say anything that's an actual turnoff, but you notice fast when you do that;) ) and focus on the tone of voice, body language, and the eyes - being aware of all this and interacting on that level is another huge step forwards. Finally, it helps to be aware of how you're perceived by women (clearly there's a huge spread here as they are all different) - one thing that might help is ask some of those girls that you're 'only friends' with for advice there. For this to work, you must genuinely just ask for advice without meaning it as a come-on; and then treat what you hear as data (mostly on what factors even figure) rather than gospel truth.
I'd say Mike's demise was depressing but necessary for the _independent_ Moon to emerge. Mike's cooperation was necessary for the revolution to win, but with all the stuff he did to subvert due process (up to and including falsifying election results), Luna would most likely have ended up as a totalitarian dictatorship if Mike was around. If anything, the Professor dying strikes me as sad, though then again he achieved his life's goal.
If there's one thing I had to pick as being depressing about that story, it's humanity's tendency to revert to rules, taxes and red tape...
The claim in the post I was replying to was > after 1 month of using it you will not want to go back and it was at least after 3 months of using it and hating it that I discovered the custom toolbar.
I guess it just goes to show everybody's brain is wired differently - I usually can find stuff in o2k without thinking twice, whereas now I still very often find myself looking in vain through the fucking ribbons for the simplest stuff and ending up having to google it.
Sorry, I have to disagree strongly about the ribbon. I've been force-upgraded to it at work about half a year ago, and still it has me shouting obscenities and having to google how to find the most trivial functions on a daily basis, because the ordering just makes no fucking sense to me at all, whereas in O2K I could find stuff just fine, even stuff I hadn't used before. The only way I could make the new Word even halfway usable is by hiding the fucking ribbon, and spending half an hour or so to hunt down the dozen most used functions and putting them onto the custom bar. Still a far cry from O2K in terms of usability, but at least I can find stuff. Dunno what studies you're refrerring to, but my experience of the ribbon is nothing but pain.
If there was enough 'free' energy to do the things you describe, ie mine 'everything' from waste and oceans on an industrial scale, waste heat would become a serious issue Earth-wide. Anything else would be a violation of the second law of thermodynamics. The reason why that's not currently a big issue is because, as you say, energy availability is the constraining factor.
No, complex algoritms are still math - being able to patent math is just silly, as anyone is capable of rediscovering it. Copyright protection, yes, but if you have rediscovered the same algorithm independently why should you have to pay royalties to someone?
There is no such thing as 'really valuable software patents' - if you want to make money off your algorithms and are afraid of them being copied, sell them as a service or as encrypted binaries.
How about earning enough money to actually fund some of the stuff you care about? Or just fund your doing unpaid fun/worthwhile stuff for several years afterwards? Way, way better motivation for me than 'designing software used by thousands of people' (yes I am in finance, and already am donating nontrivial sums to some little-known bands I'm a fan of).
I read the article, it seems to me the problem is in the small town 'communities' described there, not in the anonymous comments. If someone is slandered by an anonymous poster, I still say that's no big deal. If after that however their friends and neighbors start avoiding them, it seems to me the problem is with the friends and neighbors, fine friends indeed. Who the hell would want to live among people who take anonymous slander seriously, or anyway seriously enough to affect their behavior? The comments themselves, sure they are obnoxious, but I still maintain any actual attempt to ban them would cause more problems than it would solve.
> then what is YOUR answer to cyberbullying in small local communities? ignore it? Yes. Sticks and stones etc. Also the solution you propose is worse than the problem because the difference between the 'OK Anonymity' and 'Bad Anonymity' is entirely in the eye of the beholder. If you disagree, what's the precise criteria you'd use to say there is no imbalance of power and therefore no justification for anonymity? And how on earth would that be enforced?
I travel a lot, both business and pleasure - and it's during travel I realized I wanted a smartphone (decent tablets weren't around back then, I guess I'll get one soon too). When on holiday, I prefer to decide the next day's destination on the spur of the moment. Here is how having that live web access massively contributes to my travel enjoyment: - While sipping my latte in a nice cafe in the morning, look up the schedules of public transport from where I'm at so I don't have to rush to the railway station way ahead of time in case there's only 2 trains a day - While already en route, find a hotel to stay at that night - After getting out of a train in a random town, quickly check online what known fun stuff is in the neighborhood. Yes, I also talk to locals of course, and in a village that works best, but in a medium-sized to large town random strangers often won't know much of what I want to know (experience shows), because they will usually care about different aspects of the neighborhood than me - Stay in touch with friends in the wider neighborhood, to see whether we want to cross paths in the following days - finally, when I'm sitting in a train for 4 hours (the best way to travel in Europe), often I just plain can't be bothered to converse with the other people in the carriage (I only converse with random strangers if I like the look of them), and I don't know about you, but staring into a window for 4 hours is just plain boring to me - I much prefer a good book, or any of the above activitites
OTOH, when I'm NOT traveling, my smartphone is for me little more than an MP3 player with chat function, that is used for a voice call maybe once a week.
If you like travel best without all that, fine, but spare me your condescending tone.
The major problem with GM crops is their intellectual property implications, and another one is accidental cross-breeding with wild plants. If people are able and allowed to use the seeds of last year's GM crop to seed this year's crop, without paying a yearly fee to Monsanto or some such, and if there is a way to guarantee that the modified genes won't spill over into the wild plant gene pool (causing who knows what damage as wild plants become poisonous to bugs that feed off them), I wouldn't have a problem with GM - but what are the chances of either? Not very high.
You must not go very many places then, or your car has a trunk full of 1:25000 scale maps in it;) To be fair when I'm trekking I prefer a physical map too, but when looking for a specific street in a city, let alone for something like 'a store that sells luggage near my current position', you can't beat something like Google maps. E.
Yes, exactly! It's not a phone, it's a portable web browser, game machine, music player, and chat client that happens to also make phone calls (as long as the SMS/chat works, I could almost do without the voice call functionality to be honest). I realized I needed one when I was traveling across Europe and found myself spending a lot of time looking for Internet cafes just to be able to find and book a hotel for the night (couldn't do that ahead of time since I picked my next city on a whim each day).
For that reason however, I also hate the recent fad for touchscreen-only phones. I think the form factor of Nokia n900 is perfect (except for thickness) - when that broke, had to search far and wide and the only new phone in that form factor appears to be Droid 3, which I had to import from Canada:(
Not really. If you don't exercise your brain continuously, it'll never reach a fraction of what you're capable of - and if you stop using it, it'll atrophy pretty damn fast. I'm in my 30s, and can see the effects of careers/lifestyles on my various friends, and on how fast/effective their thinking is.
Intelligence is like muscle - sure, some are more predisposed than others to look 'bulky', but by far the most people will never look muscled or achieve high performance in any sport without working out a lot, all the time - and you have to keep working out, or you lose your condition.
The risk profile is asymmetric, same as with the banks that blew up lately - the company operating the plant reaps most of the profits of operation, and most of the risks are socialized. The risk profile is even more asymmetric for a manager who's likely to be in a different job in 5 years' time anyway.
> You think it is a good thing that younger people are teaching themselves not to obey the rules, and come to the conclusion that it is OK to break the rules because you won't get caught?
If you are reasonably sure that you won't get caught, it's IMO absolutely OK to ignore stupid rules. If you obey rules because they are 'the rules' (and not because, for example, they make sense to you), that's your problem.
> You don't think they are learning that lesson by ignoring the age restrictions?
Such as this one.
> You think it is a good idea that kids are spending more and more time on Facebook at school, rather than doing their work?
Who's talking about school? The ability of kids at school to use any kind of distracting devices, including web browsers, should be controlled of course, but that's got nothing to do with Facebook.
To be clear, I think that Facebook is a steaming pile of shit, but your arguments just don't stack up. And frankly, your whole post is one long 'that's just how things are, and if you disagree, you're ignorant' - well and the same to you, buddy.
That's your own fault then. Facebook is IMO only useful for getting in touch with people I've lost touch with, but once that happens, we exchange phone numbers and email addresses and there is nothing fragile about the resulting network. Since I don't see the point of Twitter, can't comment on that one.
As you just proved that such a 'fundamental answer' is impossible, asking that 'fundamental question' is a stupid pastime - better go play outside, or do some science, or make some money, whatever.
Slashdot Mirror
The distinction you describe makes no sense. It's an electronic exchange, so computers are involved. So you say human should push the button to do a trade - fine; what if I want to do a portfolio of different stocks - do I have to press the button for each stock separately or am I allowed to press the button once? Now what if I want to split a big trade into multiple small trades over the course of the day to minimize market impact - should I be sitting there, watching a clock and pressing that button every so often? Don't you think that's silly?
So what exactly are you proposing to ban? Humans using computers to carry out pre-defined series of actions on request? That's all automated trading is. Of course there is a human somewhere at each legal entity that enters into trades on exchanges, who bears responsibility over what trades are done and controls what sofware runs when, so ultimately 'pushes the button' - or do you think the software trades on its own account without humans involved?
Income tax? What about wealth tax? Income taxes that high simply guarantee that the already rich get to stay rich and in power.
If you want a more egalitarian world, you should tax wealth and especially inheritance, not income.
> Rather than expecting joy from a woman, I've come to simply not expecting joy for any reason really.
That's your real problem I think. Your vibe matters more than anything else when picking up, certainly more than anything you do or say. I've had a really hard time picking up women until I was about 30, and these days it just happens. The main thing that changed is simply that I'm comfortable with who I am and (this is very important) look at the interaction as one where I offer them something (my company, to begin with) rather than one where I want something from them. That's a fundamental difference in mental posture that makes all the difference in how people react to you. Secondly most of the flirting happens in the tone of voice and body language, took me a while to learn to ignore the actual words (well you have to not say anything that's an actual turnoff, but you notice fast when you do that;) ) and focus on the tone of voice, body language, and the eyes - being aware of all this and interacting on that level is another huge step forwards. Finally, it helps to be aware of how you're perceived by women (clearly there's a huge spread here as they are all different) - one thing that might help is ask some of those girls that you're 'only friends' with for advice there. For this to work, you must genuinely just ask for advice without meaning it as a come-on; and then treat what you hear as data (mostly on what factors even figure) rather than gospel truth.
Here's a very plausible explanation:
http://www.nanex.net/aqck2/3525.html
I'd say Mike's demise was depressing but necessary for the _independent_ Moon to emerge. Mike's cooperation was necessary for the revolution to win, but with all the stuff he did to subvert due process (up to and including falsifying election results), Luna would most likely have ended up as a totalitarian dictatorship if Mike was around. If anything, the Professor dying strikes me as sad, though then again he achieved his life's goal.
If there's one thing I had to pick as being depressing about that story, it's humanity's tendency to revert to rules, taxes and red tape...
The claim in the post I was replying to was
> after 1 month of using it you will not want to go back
and it was at least after 3 months of using it and hating it that I discovered the custom toolbar.
I guess it just goes to show everybody's brain is wired differently - I usually can find stuff in o2k without thinking twice, whereas now I still very often find myself looking in vain through the fucking ribbons for the simplest stuff and ending up having to google it.
Sorry, I have to disagree strongly about the ribbon. I've been force-upgraded to it at work about half a year ago, and still it has me shouting obscenities and having to google how to find the most trivial functions on a daily basis, because the ordering just makes no fucking sense to me at all, whereas in O2K I could find stuff just fine, even stuff I hadn't used before.
The only way I could make the new Word even halfway usable is by hiding the fucking ribbon, and spending half an hour or so to hunt down the dozen most used functions and putting them onto the custom bar. Still a far cry from O2K in terms of usability, but at least I can find stuff. Dunno what studies you're refrerring to, but my experience of the ribbon is nothing but pain.
If there was enough 'free' energy to do the things you describe, ie mine 'everything' from waste and oceans on an industrial scale, waste heat would become a serious issue Earth-wide. Anything else would be a violation of the second law of thermodynamics. The reason why that's not currently a big issue is because, as you say, energy availability is the constraining factor.
_believe_ that there is a link between carbon emissions and global warming? What's faith got to do with it? The science there is settled.
No, complex algoritms are still math - being able to patent math is just silly, as anyone is capable of rediscovering it. Copyright protection, yes, but if you have rediscovered the same algorithm independently why should you have to pay royalties to someone?
There is no such thing as 'really valuable software patents' - if you want to make money off your algorithms and are afraid of them being copied, sell them as a service or as encrypted binaries.
How about earning enough money to actually fund some of the stuff you care about? Or just fund your doing unpaid fun/worthwhile stuff for several years afterwards? Way, way better motivation for me than 'designing software used by thousands of people' (yes I am in finance, and already am donating nontrivial sums to some little-known bands I'm a fan of).
I read the article, it seems to me the problem is in the small town 'communities' described there, not in the anonymous comments. If someone is slandered by an anonymous poster, I still say that's no big deal. If after that however their friends and neighbors start avoiding them, it seems to me the problem is with the friends and neighbors, fine friends indeed. Who the hell would want to live among people who take anonymous slander seriously, or anyway seriously enough to affect their behavior? The comments themselves, sure they are obnoxious, but I still maintain any actual attempt to ban them would cause more problems than it would solve.
> then what is YOUR answer to cyberbullying in small local communities? ignore it?
Yes. Sticks and stones etc. Also the solution you propose is worse than the problem because the difference between the 'OK Anonymity' and 'Bad Anonymity' is entirely in the eye of the beholder. If you disagree, what's the precise criteria you'd use to say there is no imbalance of power and therefore no justification for anonymity? And how on earth would that be enforced?
Or of Heinlein's 'Friday', since the discussion still mostly assumes states based on contiguous geographical areas.
I travel a lot, both business and pleasure - and it's during travel I realized I wanted a smartphone (decent tablets weren't around back then, I guess I'll get one soon too). When on holiday, I prefer to decide the next day's destination on the spur of the moment. Here is how having that live web access massively contributes to my travel enjoyment:
- While sipping my latte in a nice cafe in the morning, look up the schedules of public transport from where I'm at so I don't have to rush to the railway station way ahead of time in case there's only 2 trains a day
- While already en route, find a hotel to stay at that night
- After getting out of a train in a random town, quickly check online what known fun stuff is in the neighborhood. Yes, I also talk to locals of course, and in a village that works best, but in a medium-sized to large town random strangers often won't know much of what I want to know (experience shows), because they will usually care about different aspects of the neighborhood than me
- Stay in touch with friends in the wider neighborhood, to see whether we want to cross paths in the following days
- finally, when I'm sitting in a train for 4 hours (the best way to travel in Europe), often I just plain can't be bothered to converse with the other people in the carriage (I only converse with random strangers if I like the look of them), and I don't know about you, but staring into a window for 4 hours is just plain boring to me - I much prefer a good book, or any of the above activitites
OTOH, when I'm NOT traveling, my smartphone is for me little more than an MP3 player with chat function, that is used for a voice call maybe once a week.
If you like travel best without all that, fine, but spare me your condescending tone.
The major problem with GM crops is their intellectual property implications, and another one is accidental cross-breeding with wild plants. If people are able and allowed to use the seeds of last year's GM crop to seed this year's crop, without paying a yearly fee to Monsanto or some such, and if there is a way to guarantee that the modified genes won't spill over into the wild plant gene pool (causing who knows what damage as wild plants become poisonous to bugs that feed off them), I wouldn't have a problem with GM - but what are the chances of either? Not very high.
You must not go very many places then, or your car has a trunk full of 1:25000 scale maps in it;)
To be fair when I'm trekking I prefer a physical map too, but when looking for a specific street in a city, let alone for something like 'a store that sells luggage near my current position', you can't beat something like Google maps.
E.
Yes, exactly! It's not a phone, it's a portable web browser, game machine, music player, and chat client that happens to also make phone calls (as long as the SMS/chat works, I could almost do without the voice call functionality to be honest). I realized I needed one when I was traveling across Europe and found myself spending a lot of time looking for Internet cafes just to be able to find and book a hotel for the night (couldn't do that ahead of time since I picked my next city on a whim each day).
:(
For that reason however, I also hate the recent fad for touchscreen-only phones. I think the form factor of Nokia n900 is perfect (except for thickness) - when that broke, had to search far and wide and the only new phone in that form factor appears to be Droid 3, which I had to import from Canada
What is it about torching buildings that you wouldn't describe as 'simply criminal'? I would be strongly in favor of death penalty for arson, myself.
Not really. If you don't exercise your brain continuously, it'll never reach a fraction of what you're capable of - and if you stop using it, it'll atrophy pretty damn fast. I'm in my 30s, and can see the effects of careers/lifestyles on my various friends, and on how fast/effective their thinking is.
Intelligence is like muscle - sure, some are more predisposed than others to look 'bulky', but by far the most people will never look muscled or achieve high performance in any sport without working out a lot, all the time - and you have to keep working out, or you lose your condition.
And Switzerland, don't forget Switzerland!
The risk profile is asymmetric, same as with the banks that blew up lately - the company operating the plant reaps most of the profits of operation, and most of the risks are socialized. The risk profile is even more asymmetric for a manager who's likely to be in a different job in 5 years' time anyway.
> You think it is a good thing that younger people are teaching themselves not to obey the rules, and come to the conclusion that it is OK to break the rules because you won't get caught?
If you are reasonably sure that you won't get caught, it's IMO absolutely OK to ignore stupid rules. If you obey rules because they are 'the rules' (and not because, for example, they make sense to you), that's your problem.
> You don't think they are learning that lesson by ignoring the age restrictions?
Such as this one.
> You think it is a good idea that kids are spending more and more time on Facebook at school, rather than doing their work?
Who's talking about school? The ability of kids at school to use any kind of distracting devices, including web browsers, should be controlled of course, but that's got nothing to do with Facebook.
To be clear, I think that Facebook is a steaming pile of shit, but your arguments just don't stack up. And frankly, your whole post is one long 'that's just how things are, and if you disagree, you're ignorant' - well and the same to you, buddy.
That's your own fault then. Facebook is IMO only useful for getting in touch with people I've lost touch with, but once that happens, we exchange phone numbers and email addresses and there is nothing fragile about the resulting network. Since I don't see the point of Twitter, can't comment on that one.
As you just proved that such a 'fundamental answer' is impossible, asking that 'fundamental question' is a stupid pastime - better go play outside, or do some science, or make some money, whatever.