This was less of a crime than hiding a bucket of water over a door for the teacher to walk through. Charging a kid with a felony is vastly disproportionate to the crime committed.
Warming of the Earth doesn't happen instantaneously. After emitting some CO2 (or other greenhouse gas) into the atmosphere, it takes quite some time before the Earth finishes warming up.
Right now, the Earth has experienced a little more than half of the warming that will eventually result from the present concentration of CO2. That basically means that if we stop emitting all CO2 and other greenhouse gasses tomorrow, the Earth would very likely still hit 1.5C of warming.
But the authors are very much correct that the 2C goal isn't safe by any means. Current model estimates are that the ice sheet of Greenland will destabilize and completely melt at somewhere close to 2C of warming. That would cause approximately 7 meters of sea level rise, in addition to all of the other sources of sea level rise (note: it'd take a few hundred years for Greenland to melt, but even relatively small amounts of sea level rise can be devastating). There's a fair amount of uncertainty here. Greenland might not destabilize until warming of 2.5C. Or it might start occur right at 2C. It would be far, far better to never find out.
2C is primarily a goal just because reasonable and cost-effective but aggressive measures to limit greenhouse gas emissions can (at present) allow us to reach a 2C target. We really wouldn't have to sacrifice much of anything to reach a 2C target (and the extra construction of renewable energy infrastructure would be a boon to many economies who are currently struggling). But we would have to overturn the massive influence of the fossil fuel lobby both on government and on the public discourse.
Not quite. The device creates a plasma barrier which reduces the intensity of incoming shock waves. Basically, it prevents nearby explosions from damaging the vehicle from their shockwaves alone. I bet any shrapnel will sail right through the plasma, and I'm sure that the plasma barrier will only weaken the shock wave, not block it entirely.
So basically it's a sound shield that blocks (or at least dampens) extremely high-energy sound waves, such as those coming from explosives.
Voting for the "lesser of two evils" is not the right way to look at the problem. The right way is to realize that politics is rather like a giant game of tug-of-war. A vote is a statement about which direction the country should move. Actual policy with remain in the center (with some corruption thrown in, sadly), but a vote in one direction will pull the center in that direction. It's not the lesser of two evils: it's a little pull in the direction you think the country should move.
Microsoft doesn't want Windows machines to cause the amount of malware and exploits on the web to explode far beyond current levels. They'll continue to get security updates for sure. But it does mean that if they call in to MS support, the agent won't help them without a valid key, and there may be some non-security Windows updates which will be restricted.
What Microsoft is warning people about is that hackers may have trojans, keyloggers, etc. built-in to the OS from the start. I don't know why this would be a danger with a "non-genuine" Windows 10 downloaded from MS, but that's been the danger with previous non-genuine versions of Windows.
Yes, we should have mandatory voting. But for that to be reasonable, voting has to be easy for everybody. That means strict requirements for polling place access (meaning reasonable maximum wait times and transit times), make voting day a mandatory national holiday (i.e., no business could force a person to work on voting day), and absentee voting should be available everywhere.
I think EMG intended this to mean that the person being harassed could delete their own account if they get tired of the trolls. Because apparently people who are on the receiving end of relentless campaigns of harassment including rape and death threats should be punished for being on the receiving end of such relentless campaigns.
This doesn't make these people "self-made". Inheritance just isn't the usual way rich parents help their children become rich. The fact remains that it is extraordinarily rare for middle class and lower to become rich.
Usually people become wealthy by having wealthy parents.
Also, it's not really foolishness. If you make the assumption that the market is efficient, it is actually rational to use price as a signal of quality. So there's a bit of a catch-22 here: if the market is efficient, then price is a signal of quality. But if people see price as a signal of quality, then the market will no longer be efficient.
Nations that have these laws usually also ensure that next to nobody has to live in such poverty that they can't afford a fine. The US is pretty exceptional in its callousness towards the poor.
Nah. The lawyer charging more will often get the deal because the wealthy person can afford it, and because they'll see the higher pricetag as a signal of how good the lawyer is.
The simplistic idea of competition you have invoked here depends upon all parties having all relevant information. This almost never happens in the real world.
There might be some issues with corporate-funded science (e.g. medical trials), but yeah, science is doing just fine overall. The ones who get things wrong all the time are journalists (there are a few good ones, but there are a plethora of horrible science journalists).
It's nice to have sometimes. For some things it's a lot easier than using the mouse pad (in particular it's faster to click on a specific thing). Usually I don't use it because I forget about it (as I spend most of my time with a desktop). But it definitely is a cool thing to have.
Nope. You have a fair amount of control as to how much data Google stores, and can tell Google to delete all of your data if you like. See here. I do think Google could stand to do a bit of work improving the interface, and making it more clear that they allow this sort of thing. But they do have pretty good privacy controls.
Even on a Chromebook, you can avoid Google collecting essentially anything connected to you if you simply browse in an incognito window and don't log into Google within that window.
If you have a weeks-running job and it isn't fault-tolerant, you're doing it wrong, period. As long as it's fault-tolerant, it isn't a big deal where it's run.
That said, if you have a job that takes days to run on a single computer, it'd be a good idea to either invest in a compute cluster or get some time on one.
Debugging has always been a problem. One of the other posts here suggested using CLANG because of it's better error reporting. Thats right now, after 25 years. Let's face it, C++ is legendary for the obscurity of it's compile and link time error reporting. Beyond that, it's not like the run time debugging environment is any better. All that it supports is the kind of break point debugging that was in C. No value added beyond K&R.
I started development in C++, but have since done quite a bit of development in Java, JavaScript, Go, and Python. I've really come to miss Clang's expressive compile errors, though there are other things about these languages that can be nice. Java is okay. JavaScript is abominable. Go is nearly as good as Java. Python is pretty terrible. As far as compile errors are concerned, anyway.
The other languages have other things that are good and bad, but C++, especially C++11 is great for just getting things to compile. One other cool thing about modern C++ is that it's easier than ever to force more and more errors to occur during compile time, instead of waiting for a runtime error to blow things up in production.
To make the most of C++ really requires good programming practices, though. For that I highly recommend Scott Meyers' "Effective C++" books.
There really isn't all that much difference, so that once you get comfortable with one you should be able to switch to the other without much difficulty if you need to. But I'd lean towards C++ because the tools are more mature.
Two other tips:
1. Use Clang (part of LLVM) as your compiler. The error messages are vastly easier to interpret, which should cut down on both learning and development time. Note that Clang supports both Objective C and C++.
2. If you do go for C++, make sure to start learning on C++11 or C++14. C++11 significantly changes quite a lot about the language, and if you start with older C++ books, you'll have to unlearn a lot of stuff if you want to develop modern C++. C++14 has mostly just minor fixes to C++11.
It generally doesn't work this way. Websites that claim vaccines are bad, or global warming is a hoax, or cell phones cause cancer, are typically littered with large numbers of easily-checkable factual errors. As long as the corpus on easily-verifiable facts is large enough, Google will almost certainly have little problem eliminating most of the bogus claims, even politically-controversial ones, from the top of its rankings.
Yes, it is mostly for cable, but some locations only have one DSL provider. And yet many cities do have exclusive franchises for cable Internet.
You can quibble all you like about it being a "franchise agreement" rather than a mandated monopoly, but to the consumer they're exactly the same thing: there is only one choice of provider, and that restriction is maintained by the local government.
As for the local government being "stupid", that's up for debate. It could just as easily be that the local government is corrupt (which can be difficult to avoid given how much money the large cable companies have compared to the local governments), or that they've fallen for some bad ideology related to "natural monopolies". Either way, the cable companies are absolutely not innocent here.
This isn't accurate. Many municipalities do indeed have ISP monopolies which are mandated by the local government. Typically they require specific regulations (such as price controls) in exchange for the local government enforcing the monopoly.
Such government-mandated monopolies aren't ubiquitous, but neither are they terribly uncommon in the US. There's no such thing at the state or federal level, of course, but there is at the local level.
As long as the new rules are successful in increasing competition among ISP's, this won't be a concern. And if the new rules aren't successful in increasing competition among ISP's, then I doubt price regulations would do much of anything to improve the situation.
I doubt it's quite 100%. Probably closer to 98%. There are, sadly, some people who are genuinely fooled into believing this stuff, and a small fraction of those may have the scruples to avoid receiving money from the fossil fuel industry (even if the fossil fuel industry doesn't turn people into climate deniers with its funds, it really really likes to lend as much credence as possible to climate denialism, which means amplifying the voices of any credentialed person they can possibly find who denies climate change).
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This was less of a crime than hiding a bucket of water over a door for the teacher to walk through. Charging a kid with a felony is vastly disproportionate to the crime committed.
So, are content providers evil for wanting money for their work?
This kind of service allows content providers to continue to get money, while at the same time delivering an ad-free experience to users.
If you don't like ads, but you also don't want to pay for content posted on the web, well, that's not a very ethical position.
Warming of the Earth doesn't happen instantaneously. After emitting some CO2 (or other greenhouse gas) into the atmosphere, it takes quite some time before the Earth finishes warming up.
Right now, the Earth has experienced a little more than half of the warming that will eventually result from the present concentration of CO2. That basically means that if we stop emitting all CO2 and other greenhouse gasses tomorrow, the Earth would very likely still hit 1.5C of warming.
But the authors are very much correct that the 2C goal isn't safe by any means. Current model estimates are that the ice sheet of Greenland will destabilize and completely melt at somewhere close to 2C of warming. That would cause approximately 7 meters of sea level rise, in addition to all of the other sources of sea level rise (note: it'd take a few hundred years for Greenland to melt, but even relatively small amounts of sea level rise can be devastating). There's a fair amount of uncertainty here. Greenland might not destabilize until warming of 2.5C. Or it might start occur right at 2C. It would be far, far better to never find out.
2C is primarily a goal just because reasonable and cost-effective but aggressive measures to limit greenhouse gas emissions can (at present) allow us to reach a 2C target. We really wouldn't have to sacrifice much of anything to reach a 2C target (and the extra construction of renewable energy infrastructure would be a boon to many economies who are currently struggling). But we would have to overturn the massive influence of the fossil fuel lobby both on government and on the public discourse.
Not quite. The device creates a plasma barrier which reduces the intensity of incoming shock waves. Basically, it prevents nearby explosions from damaging the vehicle from their shockwaves alone. I bet any shrapnel will sail right through the plasma, and I'm sure that the plasma barrier will only weaken the shock wave, not block it entirely.
So basically it's a sound shield that blocks (or at least dampens) extremely high-energy sound waves, such as those coming from explosives.
And not voting for either is what, exactly?
Voting for the "lesser of two evils" is not the right way to look at the problem. The right way is to realize that politics is rather like a giant game of tug-of-war. A vote is a statement about which direction the country should move. Actual policy with remain in the center (with some corruption thrown in, sadly), but a vote in one direction will pull the center in that direction. It's not the lesser of two evils: it's a little pull in the direction you think the country should move.
Microsoft doesn't want Windows machines to cause the amount of malware and exploits on the web to explode far beyond current levels. They'll continue to get security updates for sure. But it does mean that if they call in to MS support, the agent won't help them without a valid key, and there may be some non-security Windows updates which will be restricted.
What Microsoft is warning people about is that hackers may have trojans, keyloggers, etc. built-in to the OS from the start. I don't know why this would be a danger with a "non-genuine" Windows 10 downloaded from MS, but that's been the danger with previous non-genuine versions of Windows.
Yes, we should have mandatory voting. But for that to be reasonable, voting has to be easy for everybody. That means strict requirements for polling place access (meaning reasonable maximum wait times and transit times), make voting day a mandatory national holiday (i.e., no business could force a person to work on voting day), and absentee voting should be available everywhere.
I think EMG intended this to mean that the person being harassed could delete their own account if they get tired of the trolls. Because apparently people who are on the receiving end of relentless campaigns of harassment including rape and death threats should be punished for being on the receiving end of such relentless campaigns.
This doesn't make these people "self-made". Inheritance just isn't the usual way rich parents help their children become rich. The fact remains that it is extraordinarily rare for middle class and lower to become rich.
Usually people become wealthy by having wealthy parents.
Also, it's not really foolishness. If you make the assumption that the market is efficient, it is actually rational to use price as a signal of quality. So there's a bit of a catch-22 here: if the market is efficient, then price is a signal of quality. But if people see price as a signal of quality, then the market will no longer be efficient.
This isn't a matter of how free or not the market is. It's a matter of information.
If it weren't for a lack of information among market participants of this very sort, there would be no such thing as $10,000 ethernet cables.
Nations that have these laws usually also ensure that next to nobody has to live in such poverty that they can't afford a fine. The US is pretty exceptional in its callousness towards the poor.
Nah. The lawyer charging more will often get the deal because the wealthy person can afford it, and because they'll see the higher pricetag as a signal of how good the lawyer is.
The simplistic idea of competition you have invoked here depends upon all parties having all relevant information. This almost never happens in the real world.
There might be some issues with corporate-funded science (e.g. medical trials), but yeah, science is doing just fine overall. The ones who get things wrong all the time are journalists (there are a few good ones, but there are a plethora of horrible science journalists).
It's nice to have sometimes. For some things it's a lot easier than using the mouse pad (in particular it's faster to click on a specific thing). Usually I don't use it because I forget about it (as I spend most of my time with a desktop). But it definitely is a cool thing to have.
Nope. You have a fair amount of control as to how much data Google stores, and can tell Google to delete all of your data if you like. See here. I do think Google could stand to do a bit of work improving the interface, and making it more clear that they allow this sort of thing. But they do have pretty good privacy controls.
Even on a Chromebook, you can avoid Google collecting essentially anything connected to you if you simply browse in an incognito window and don't log into Google within that window.
If you have a weeks-running job and it isn't fault-tolerant, you're doing it wrong, period. As long as it's fault-tolerant, it isn't a big deal where it's run.
That said, if you have a job that takes days to run on a single computer, it'd be a good idea to either invest in a compute cluster or get some time on one.
At least women in STEM and global warming are important issues....
Debugging has always been a problem. One of the other posts here suggested using CLANG because of it's better error reporting. Thats right now, after 25 years. Let's face it, C++ is legendary for the obscurity of it's compile and link time error reporting. Beyond that, it's not like the run time debugging environment is any better. All that it supports is the kind of break point debugging that was in C. No value added beyond K&R.
I started development in C++, but have since done quite a bit of development in Java, JavaScript, Go, and Python. I've really come to miss Clang's expressive compile errors, though there are other things about these languages that can be nice. Java is okay. JavaScript is abominable. Go is nearly as good as Java. Python is pretty terrible. As far as compile errors are concerned, anyway.
The other languages have other things that are good and bad, but C++, especially C++11 is great for just getting things to compile. One other cool thing about modern C++ is that it's easier than ever to force more and more errors to occur during compile time, instead of waiting for a runtime error to blow things up in production.
To make the most of C++ really requires good programming practices, though. For that I highly recommend Scott Meyers' "Effective C++" books.
There really isn't all that much difference, so that once you get comfortable with one you should be able to switch to the other without much difficulty if you need to. But I'd lean towards C++ because the tools are more mature.
Two other tips:
1. Use Clang (part of LLVM) as your compiler. The error messages are vastly easier to interpret, which should cut down on both learning and development time. Note that Clang supports both Objective C and C++.
2. If you do go for C++, make sure to start learning on C++11 or C++14. C++11 significantly changes quite a lot about the language, and if you start with older C++ books, you'll have to unlearn a lot of stuff if you want to develop modern C++. C++14 has mostly just minor fixes to C++11.
It generally doesn't work this way. Websites that claim vaccines are bad, or global warming is a hoax, or cell phones cause cancer, are typically littered with large numbers of easily-checkable factual errors. As long as the corpus on easily-verifiable facts is large enough, Google will almost certainly have little problem eliminating most of the bogus claims, even politically-controversial ones, from the top of its rankings.
Yes, it is mostly for cable, but some locations only have one DSL provider. And yet many cities do have exclusive franchises for cable Internet.
You can quibble all you like about it being a "franchise agreement" rather than a mandated monopoly, but to the consumer they're exactly the same thing: there is only one choice of provider, and that restriction is maintained by the local government.
As for the local government being "stupid", that's up for debate. It could just as easily be that the local government is corrupt (which can be difficult to avoid given how much money the large cable companies have compared to the local governments), or that they've fallen for some bad ideology related to "natural monopolies". Either way, the cable companies are absolutely not innocent here.
This isn't accurate. Many municipalities do indeed have ISP monopolies which are mandated by the local government. Typically they require specific regulations (such as price controls) in exchange for the local government enforcing the monopoly.
Such government-mandated monopolies aren't ubiquitous, but neither are they terribly uncommon in the US. There's no such thing at the state or federal level, of course, but there is at the local level.
As long as the new rules are successful in increasing competition among ISP's, this won't be a concern. And if the new rules aren't successful in increasing competition among ISP's, then I doubt price regulations would do much of anything to improve the situation.
I doubt it's quite 100%. Probably closer to 98%. There are, sadly, some people who are genuinely fooled into believing this stuff, and a small fraction of those may have the scruples to avoid receiving money from the fossil fuel industry (even if the fossil fuel industry doesn't turn people into climate deniers with its funds, it really really likes to lend as much credence as possible to climate denialism, which means amplifying the voices of any credentialed person they can possibly find who denies climate change).