The trouble is that wikipedia articles arent' "authored". They are "edited", by several wikipedians. Having written an excellent article, it can be unrecognizable a few months later. Academics that want CV-able material *could* continue to monitor their article forever, reverting harmful changes, and actively participating on the discussion page. However, this takes a lot of time, and is better suited for unemployed wikipedians. If you want to improve your CV, it would be better to write your articles only once, and be done with it. This can be done by writing real journal articles, real magazine articles, real books, real websites, or even real blogs.
Aylar isn't doing hardcore anymore, she's a "glamour" model now. (Previously I didn't know "glamour" involved showing your hooters to everyone, but maybe that's just me).
But yeah, there is norwegian hardcore porn, and it's mostly distributed through swedish (or other foreign) companies. Some people have been fined too! (Perhaps the most famous example are the "fuck for forest"-people, which did a live "performance" at a rock-festival, in order to gather funds for saving the rainforest!)
I think most of Europe is more liberal when it comes to pornography than Norway. In some respects, Norwegian law is still overly influenced by old-fashioned traditional christian values. Compared to e.g. France, we are nowhere as secular. There's still a state church (it's optional to be a member, and there are no particular benefits to members of the state church as compared to members of other religious communities, but still, it's the "states official religion"). And the king is also the high priest of our state church (as Luther intended). We also have high taxes and limitations on distribution of alcohol and tobacco.
And even though I'm a liberal atheist, and in general disagree that the state should have the right to tell me what to do, except when I'm in danger of hurting others, I must admit that it's these compromises between traditional conservative values, socialism values, and progressive liberal values that make our country a great place to live. You can of course argue where the line should go, but if the country was ruled by only progressives, only liberals, or only socialists, I think it would be a much worse place to live. (And uhm, yeah, in case you wondered, most socialists are against porn too...)
I'm sorry, I don't have 4.54 billion years to spend on something that might produce similar results. Besides, there's no guarantee we would understand that either. Could you suggest something faster and/or better/more predictable?
Building a working brain from silicon circuits depends on one profound assumption: consciousness is a function of only newtonian physics.
Please explain to me exactly which parts of semiconductor physics you consider to be following the laws of newtonian physics...
this assumption holds, then you could just write a massive computer program that computes the newtonian equations.
Just like we can "just" build a massive computer program to predict the weather, or the markets, or whatever. We are not having a total understanding of the brain, therefore we can't write a program emulating it. In order to gain a better understanding of the brain we do experiments with various kinds of circuits and hardware. Limiting ourselves to just experiment with Intel Core Duo processors seems a bit silly, even though they are Turing-complete (assuming that is sufficient). It would be like trying to discover the laws of optics through only experimenting with air and water, but never using glass, crystals, lasers, whatever...
A software model of the actual hardware should be sufficient to prove the validity of the idea.
Yeah, if you know what you're doing. We aren't. We are experimenting, trying to discover things. So tell me, who do you think would have the greatest chance of building a cottage in the woods using only an axe? A carpenter who has spent most of his life with hands-on construction techniques, or an engineer who knows how to create advanced models in autocad? Sometimes hands-on is the best way.
However, some scientists believe that consciousness is not newtonian. Rather, human consciousness is derived from quantum processes.
You would be surprised what some scientists believe. Some believe consciousness derives from God, small men inside our brain, metaphysical "souls", quantum processes, telephone switching boards, computer-like circuitry, whatever... The point is, they have no idea. So instead of arguing about that (like the ancient greeks argued about whether movement was real or not), these scientists proceed to build something that might give them a better understanding of certain aspects of the brains function.
Short answer: Hardcore pornography is outlawed, but somewhat tolerated in a round-about way. Softcore pornography is available at most major newsstands.
Long answer: Hardcore porn is defined as "genitals in movement". I'm not sure how this translates (legally) to still-images, but you know it when you see it. Possesion and import for private use of hardcore porn is legal, as is production (unless it's considered "pimping", which is illegal (prostitution is not)), or done in public, disturbing other people. Sale, distribution and broadcasting is illegal, but feel free to distribute it through a Swedish mail-order company, shop at the border, website, or even satellite-TV "aimed at" Sweden (You would be surprised how many Norwegians view certain channels with Swedish subtitles instead of Norwegian subtitles). Bestiality has the same legality as normal hardcore porn. I'm not sure about necrophilia. Pedo-porn is of course highly illegal either way. Exceptions about the "genitals in movement" rule has been made for "artistic" reasons by the film sensor bureau, but there is no danger that Vivid Video will be considered "artistic" any time soon (Lars von Trier is). There is some likelihood though, that a major trial with a pornographer can change all this (as Larry Flynt once did in USA). That this will change through a political prosess any time soon is unlikely, politicians don't want to be associated with porn, even though they may think otherwise privately.
Bottom line is: The amount of double standards in Norway is no different than the ones we usually criticize US for. Sad but true. However, there is no chance in hell that Norway will ever build a great firewall, like China. This is just a silly suggestion by a committee which has gotten lots of press because it's just so silly.
Why is it that no one insisted on Russia being systematically "deSovietized" the way that the post-WWII Axis, Afghanistan and Iraq have been cleaned up?
Obviously because Soviet wasn't conquered by a coalition of foreign military forces as the other examples you mention. (And besides, I think past sense is more than a little bit optimistic with regards to Afghanistand and Iraq).
Why aren't the leaders who participated in the gulags, etc. hanging from gallows?
First of all, the leaders who participated in the gulags, etc, did it as part of
a legal government, according to the will of the party. If you want to really punish someone, you should go after Stalin, etc, but he is dead. Finally, if the people who took part in the former government are all hanged, what good would it do to Russia? A bloody revolution is not the right way to start a democratic reform, it's exactly what the Russian people wanted to get away from.
Where are the human rights trials?
Nowhere. If people were imprisoned in gulag for e.g. political reasons, they should seek reparations from the russian government (or from other governments part of the Soviet union). Holding human rights trials serves little purpose when most of the perpetrators are dead long ago.
The Soviet Union was as bad or worse in the number of its people that it murdered than the Nazi regime. In fact, despite the cries of "Fascism!" the Italian Fascists were certifiably peaceniks in the numbers they killed compared to either the Nazis or the Soviets. In many respects, the Soviet Union was one if not the worst regime in the 20th century.
Yes.
Things like this are a left over from the Soviet era. If the Russian people were smart, they would learn to get over their bullshit nationalism and repudiate their "Soviet glory days" with a vengeance by hanging the Communists and abolishing all of the last traces of Communist rule from Russia.
Things like this are a result of international/american pressure against Russia to conform to internation/american copyright law. Trust me, the Russians would not put teachers in prison for software piracy if it wasn't for pressure outside Russia. That the Russians have kept some of their internment camps in Gulag (for regular prisoners, not political opponents), is no worse than the Americans still having the death penalty, a court-system where only poor people are guilty, Guantanamo, or the rumored secret detainment camp in Europe (Poland?).
The real issue, people, is that the Russian government has not fundamentally changed since the fall of the USSR.
It can be argued that the Russian government hasn't changed fundamentally since the Tsars either, and that the "communist" rule simply replaced the "tsar" with a "secretary general", and that the "democratic" rule simple replaced the "secretary general" with a "president". There are other fundamental problems within Russia than its communist heritage. Sure, the communist era was bad, but so has every other part of Russian history been.
Why are people being sent to Siberia, especially for such a petty crime? I could understand violent crime, such as armed robbery, rape or murder, but simple theft or piracy?
The reason Siberia was mentioned was to appeal to emotion, and it's not absolutely clear that that's where he ends up anyway. And, I don't know how the Siberian detention camps are today. Are they better or worse than other Russian prisons? Maybe it's the closest prison (he was from a remote region)? Simply appealing to emotion can obviously be effective, but sometimes you have to use reason as well, when you want to judge what is best.
Why would you need to advocate linux in 5 minutes?
Either he is already curious about trying linux. In which case, he needs help, not advocacy (which seems to be the case in your example).
Or, he is not interested in running linux, or can't run linux (because it doesn't work with his ipod, gps, favourite game, limited intellect, whatever), in which case, he needs further linux development, not advocacy.
Please, just stop saving the world by converting people to linux. This isn't christianity. Linus didn't say "GOTO the people of all nations and make them my disciples". Linux isn't the best solution for everybody, no matter what the problem was. It's an operating system that is a good choice for some people, and a bad choice for others. People should be able to make their own choice.
Sometimes you want a server that is incrementally updated, instead of every few years having to upgrade _everything_. I agree it's not common, but there are good reasons to run Gentoo on a server.
Which is why we mostly do first-come, first-serve.
Who are "we"? Are you a representative of ICANN?
Furthermore, this doesn't stop us from doing nice things like redirecting to a more relevant site,
Again, who are "we"? Surely ICANN doesn't control wikipedia? And you can't be talking about humanity, as there are plenty of counterexamples. E.g. people looking for cheap apples won't find them at apple.com. So which group are you speaking on behalf of now?
In the real world, we almost never run into people with the same first and last name
That depends upon where you live. In e.g. Iceland, it would be a pretty typical occurrence. But we aren't talking about the real world here, we're talking about the virtual world known as Internet, and on the Internet, it's pretty common to find more than one person with the same name.
Ahem. Domain Names are dirt cheap.
And analogies suck. So what?
Which is it? Do you want those with money to have the advantage? Or do you want the game to go to those who are lucky, and have a bit of imagination?
Yes, please!
It sounds to me like what you're saying is, "If I can't have sex.com, then no one can!"
I'm only interested in sex, not.com. And if I can't have sex, I might choose to take my revenge upon humanity... (evil laughter). But seriously, I'm not interested in creating or selling pornography. I might use it for my own enjoyment, in private, but I don't think that has anything to do with this debate.
I'm saying, if you missed the domain you wanted, tough shit, think of a better one and buy that.
You may say that, but it is not the currently adopted policy of resolving domain name disputes. Furthermore, it wouldn't work because of domain squatters.
Do you have any other problem with the current DNS other than potential lawsuits?
Lawsuits are not a problem with DNS, only with how it's managed.
FINAL WORDS: My goal is not to insert random alphanumerics into domain names. My goal is to keep people from getting the domain name they want. And I want to keep it away from everyone. That way, nobody can own common words anymore. Adding alphanumerics is just one proposal for reaching this goal.
No, it isn't. It's not a book. And it has nothing to do with phones, or phone-numbers. You can't browse it. You can't search it. There are no yellow pages. The closest analogy to a phone book for the Internet is google, not DNS.
I have a phone book stored in my phone. I find a name, it dials the number, just like real DNS.
No. Real DNS would mean that the names can't be "found". Real DNS would require you to already know the exact name for you to look it up. And you couldn't invent your own names, like "Mom", you would have to use full name and/or SSN to look up the phone number(s) of a person/residence/company.
It'd be significantly harder to teach her to use google.g2l8ai98o
Why? She already knows how to use 411, right? Besides, I was never suggesting sequences of 9 random alphanumericals.
So what? Throw away the TLDs, and they can have those anyway -- they can simply register "coke", and have drink.coke.
Because there are plenty of other people who have just as much right to the name "coke" as the coca-coly company. Examples include suppliers of dry-destilled charcoal, columbian drug-cartels, people working to help coke-addicts, people who think the coca-cola company sucks, etc...
Instead of Apple Corp, we'll have Apple blaealkcaoer
Actually, it's not named Apple Corp, it is named Apple Inc (and it was Apple Computer Inc until 8. jan 2007). Apart from that, I see very few problems with this. Many companies use different names when they register as a business, and when they conduct their business with real customers. If "Apple blaealkcaoer" is globally unique, it would be an improvement to something that is only unique within USA. They can still sell ipods with the brand name "Apple", or "Mac", or "Macintosh", or what the fuck they want. But the warranty should be from Apple blaealkcaoer.
Ok, from now on, my name is no longer David Masover, it's David Masoecrkase5123
Yup, that's why you are not just named David. While most of your friends probably use "David" or "Dave", when there is risk of confusion, "Masover" is added. If there are further risk of confusion, SSN can be used. Of course, SSNs doesn't work within USA, so your idea may still have some merit.
It's a bit like saying, "I don't like billboards cluttering up the countryside. If we detonate a tactical nuke on the contryside, there won't be any billboards."
Nope, it's closer to saying: "I don't like big companies putting up billboards along the main roads, while other people with fewer resources, who has something to say, are not allowed to put their own billboards up. I suggest we place billboards everywhere, assign a modest fee for writing on it, and make sure there are enough billboards so that no one can afford to write on every one of them. There will still be billboards along the main roads, but you are just as likely to get your writing on one in the Sahara desert, at 300 feet depth in the sea, or somewhere in Siberia." Obviously this sounds ridiculous within the physical world, but DNS lives in the virtual world, and the economic cost of putting billboards everywhere, is for all practical purposes zero, and the environmental impact is none.
...I wonder where the debate stems from. Gentoo is a nice OS and all that, but it's not one that includes the features most server admins want: stability, non-intrusive security upgrades, support for commercial software, minimum hassle, minimum maintenance, and minimum surprises!
Of course, if you absolutely want to, Gentoo is perfectly capable of running on a server. It's just not something I would use myself, or recommend to any others. People who do so, do it because they are already Gentoo fans, not because it's the system that's arguably best for their purpose.
Oh, and since this was a discussion about usability, tell me how my mother will be just thrilled that Coke's website is coke.c9xq9 instead of coke.com. You may as well just have her enter 216.64.210.31, it's just as easy to remember!
As of today, your mother is perfectly capable of using digits whenever she uses a phone. She probably even has one of those phone-books, and knows how to use it. I'm sure you can teach her to use google too. Using 216.64.210.31 is a bad idea, as IP numbers are dependent upon geographical location, hosting company, etc...
And the coca-cola company probably has enough money to repeat registering their name untill they come up with something more rememberable by chance. Hell, if they keep going on long enough, they could have coke.itis, coke.drink, or coke.coke, all of them way cooler than coke.com. Of course, they could have that too. All you need is ridiculous amounts of money, and patience. (But to avoid "ownership" of names, the names should be priced so that owning all combinations would exceed tha amount of money on earth). And with 5-letter domain-names, you can probably afford to weed out ridiculous combinations like c9xq9 before they are even sold.
The domain name system was never intended to be a global system in the way it is today. It grew out of a need to replace hosts.txt. As such, it made some sense at the time to have separate domains for.gov,.mil,.edu,.net,.com, and.org. They were all great friends back then, and didn't need to fight over domain names. Nobody expected soft-drink manufacturers to go to court to get "their" domain names. As the net grew larger, you were bound to have conflicts of people or companies that wanted the same name. Given that both of them are "right", the only sane solution is to make a system that guarantees nobody can "own" a name.
I disagree. There's no way we can get everyone to agree that the name "Apple" should point to a machine serving web-pages for the company Apple. There's plenty of other alternatives that are just as sensible. Such as that record-company by the Beatles, the worlds greatest web-resource for apple-farming and apple-recipes, or a web-site promoting a book about how apples improve your health, or whatever... And even if most people currently would agree that the name "Apple" should be owned by the company Apple, this may not be true in 100 years.
Having zero, or only a few top-level domains, is a recipe for quarrels, infighting, lawsuits, and whatever. There's no reason to advocate a "solution" that will guarantee trouble. Instead, NOBODY should get the special treatment. Geocities.com had the right idea with their district/streetname/number pathnames. At least for most people, these are easier to remember than ip-numbers (at least IPv6), and is equally fair towards everyone. Similarly, we should open up just about every possible TLD. 2-letter TLDs are currently reserved for countries. Allowing 0-letter or 1-letter TLDs would be unfair, as there are only a very limited supply. But three, four, five, six, and seven letter TLDs are all available. When people want to register a name, such as e.g. "coke", they get a random TLD, e.g. "coke.c9xq9". If they are not happy, they can try again. The important thing is that nobody will be allowed to ask specially for e.g. ".com", or ".xxx", and that there will be too many TLDs for it to be practical for any company to own them all (including microsoft).
What they're really worried about is that people will publish in other media, especially where they don't have to pay (or not as much).
AFAIK, you don't have to pay to publish in nature. You have to pay to get yourself a number of nature (and every university library in the world does just that).
That being said, the publishers of nature has had tremendous power. As one of the most well-known and established scientific journals in the world, they have been able to more or less define what passes as good mainstream science (will get published by nature), and what passes as fringe theories (will not get published by nature). Now that that power is dwindling, it's no wonder they try desperately to cling to it....
Well, it's embarassingly short if we're talking about a dick. But size doesn't matter, right?
I'm sure most Americans and most British people over the age of 50 aren't going to have any idea.
But they do have an idea of the tensile strength of a rope needed to stop a Boeing 747 in mid flight? At least with 10 cm, they can divide it by 2.54 cm/inch, and get the result in inches.
Most Europens will probably struggle with 4 inches
Most europeans know that an inch is about 2.5 cm. Surprisingly many know that it is 2.54 cm. This is because most europeans have to deal with inches in some few situations, because of american standards. Anyway, it's not particularly hard for an author to use both sane and american units. At least, it should be easier than to come up with these visualizations of passenger jet planes and citrus fruits.
I'm sure more people have seen a grapefruit than regularly use either of those measurements.
I'm quite sure most people have heard about either 10 cm, or 4 inches. If they haven't, they probably aren't able to read either. Then again, yeah, if you manage to find someone who haven't seen a grapefruit, I'll bet (s)he doesn't recognize 10 cm or 4 inches either. And finally, grapefruit is a pretty non-typical example, as grapefruits actually tend to be about 10 cm. If you had said e.g. tomatoes, the size varies a lot more.
And when someone talks about 1kg, I tend to think how heavy a 1kg bag of sugar is to get some idea of the weight we're talking about.
Exactly. You think of a bag of sugar as 1 kg. I usually buy unrefined sugar, which comes in 500g packages. So telling me to compare with a bag of sugar is totally useless. Other people might buy sugar in other quantities. And many have rarely considered the weight of the packages, as they usually handle opened packages, or use their own container to store sugar. Finally, some people never cook, and may not even know in what form sugar is retailed.
Correction: If you happen to run linux on an ia32 compatible platform, you can run most VSTs you don't need. If it's a VST you need, it will either fail to work, fail to run reliably, or show some other bugs that make it useless for you.
Smart people aren't crooks. It doesn't take too much intelligence to perceive that you have limited time and resources to commit a crime, law enforcement has all the time and resources in the world to investigate.
On the other hand, you can spend decades planning the perfect crime. The police can only spend as much as the budget allows (which is frequently ridiculously low). What keeps people from doing crime, is that people are generally good people, and don't want to harm anyone else. If we had to rely on fear of getting caught alone, the society would have broken down several millennia ago.
The only way to remain uncaught, apart from pure luck, is being such a petty crook that nobody really cares.
In general, you will get caught if your crime is important enough, or if you are stupid enough. The truly talentless idiotic morons who repeatedly do the same petty crimes over and over, will eventually be caught, no matter how petty crimes we talk about. The normally intelligent, or slightly below average intelligent people who do more major robberies, etc, will often get caught. And yeah, if your crime is really important, you may end up getting caught even if you are really smart. Like the unabomber. On the other hand, there are plenty of old people shoplifting who never get caught.
Remember you aren't alone in the world. There's always someone who may have seen you, who may remember. The homeless who was sleeping under that cardboard by the trash can, the security guard who had to take a leak, the neighbor who became curious, your car had a flat and that police officer comes to help you, the maintenance crew arrives for an unscheduled repair while you are in the system, etc.
A reasonably intelligent criminal can assume that the people who observed him doesn't recognize him, because he's not a celebrity, and not in his home town, and is wearing some form of disguise, and is not wearing his normal clothes, and is driving a stolen car, and so on...
If you don't consider all the possibilities you are stupid, if you rely on luck, you are stupid. The only smart people are honest people.
Relying on luck is stupid, but you can't consider all possibilities, as it's completely unpractical, even for law-abiding honest citizens. Nobody does that, instead we rely on chance, that the odds are in our favour. E.g whenever I get into traffic, I expect to live, because I assume I'm one of the lucky people who are not getting into an accident.
And saying that only smart people are honest people is wishful thinking. It might make you feel good, but that doesn't make it true. Saddam Hussein is just one example...
Then if a group of murders decide to shoot down a commercial airliner at landing with a missile, they will know that a city (but not which city) will be bombed in such a way to result in tens of thousands of causalities within a few days.
If you ever come up with such idiotic nonsense again, I promise I will kill 10,000 kittens and every Nobel Peace Prize winner still living! And remember, you will be responsible for that!
Do some cheap horrible thing, and be responsible for some huge horror afterwards. Nobody's god could be used to justify that.
Uhmm, many terrorists already use their religious beliefs as justification for acts of terror. So no, your logic is faulty here. Furthermore, all terrorists doesn't share the same agenda. Having the bonus of a nuke go off in Mecca might attract the interests of israelian extremists in doing terrorist acts against America, for example. And then there's the question of what you define as a terrorist. With your idea, the American government would certainly qualify.
Perhaps we should stop being so civilized when we're dealing with monsters who have convinced themselves that their god wants them to die.
What's the point of fighting terrorists if you abandon civilized society?
doesn't make it right for this guy to commit copyright infringement.
Uhm...no. It is right for this guy to commit copyright infringement. In fact, in this digital age, pretty much any copyright infringement is ethically right! But in this particular case, it was right for a whole lot of other reasons as well.
If he was too dumb to know there might be consequences, sucks to be him.
I'm quite certain he was aware that he was operating in a legally murky area. Then again, even if the area was legally murky, he had the benefit of hindsight, as there were other people who had produced mixtapes before him, who did not get a SWAT team on their front door. Yeah, it sucks to be him, but nobody expects the spanish inquisition
The real problem I see is that there is no real string. Most physics so far has been based on real things: mass, electrons,... Strings are just a modelling tool.
Uhm, no. In string theory, strings are real. Just as in classical alchemy, the four elements: fire, air, water, earth; where real (as defined by Empedocle). Or as the atom was real for Leucippe of Milet. Or masses were real for Newton. Or the electron is real for you. Or an apple is real for me. That you fail to see strings as real is probably more of a limitation with your imagination, than a shortcoming of string theory.
Then someone figures out a characterising equation. Then someone else figures it is because space is bent. Then strings.
Yes, the universe often turns out to be even more complex than we imagined.
No longer are we improving our observations. Now we're coming out with mathematical models of things that don't really exist.
To be called science, a new theory must predict stuff that we couldn't predict before. Furthermore, when tested in a laboratory (or in some other way), these predictions must be correct (or at least seem correct). Thus we are improving our predictions. I'm not sure what you mean by improving our observations, but surely they too have improved since Archimedes timed balls rolling on an incline using his pulse. And if a theory predicts things that don't really exist, the theory is per definition falsified, thus any theory of quantum gravity that depends on the existence of pink unicorns, will not be called science (unless you can use the theory to help looking for pink unicorns, and hopefully, eventually find one). Of course, a different theory of quantum gravity that makes the same predictions, but does not depend on the existence of pink unicorns would be preferable, if it existed.
IT deparments, in traditional businesses, don't directly add income. And because of that, they are expected to do the impossible at the snap of a finger, whenever the business asks for it.
As much as I like your theory, it's wrong. In all traditional businesses, management will look down upon everyone below them. Everyone (NOT just IT) will be asked to do the impossible, with inadequate tools/resources/budgets/whatever, as well as yelled at, abused, and accused of incompetence or lazyness whenever they fail to accomplish the arbitrary goals set by someone above them who have no idea of what the work actually is.
The only way out of this is to (a) become valuable enough as an employee that you can pretty much pick and choose jobs, so that the CEO would rather fire your boss than you; or (b) start your own business. Either way, it's a lot of effort, and the end result means you will have more responsability, which is just as tiring, just in another way. Either way, you can't have it all (unless you have really rich parents, and can live out of their pockets, but I'm sure there's disadvantages to that as well)
Slashdot Mirror
The trouble is that wikipedia articles arent' "authored". They are "edited", by several wikipedians. Having written an excellent article, it can be unrecognizable a few months later. Academics that want CV-able material *could* continue to monitor their article forever, reverting harmful changes, and actively participating on the discussion page. However, this takes a lot of time, and is better suited for unemployed wikipedians. If you want to improve your CV, it would be better to write your articles only once, and be done with it. This can be done by writing real journal articles, real magazine articles, real books, real websites, or even real blogs.
Aylar isn't doing hardcore anymore, she's a "glamour" model now. (Previously I didn't know "glamour" involved showing your hooters to everyone, but maybe that's just me).
But yeah, there is norwegian hardcore porn, and it's mostly distributed through swedish (or other foreign) companies. Some people have been fined too! (Perhaps the most famous example are the "fuck for forest"-people, which did a live "performance" at a rock-festival, in order to gather funds for saving the rainforest!)
I think most of Europe is more liberal when it comes to pornography than Norway. In some respects, Norwegian law is still overly influenced by old-fashioned traditional christian values. Compared to e.g. France, we are nowhere as secular. There's still a state church (it's optional to be a member, and there are no particular benefits to members of the state church as compared to members of other religious communities, but still, it's the "states official religion"). And the king is also the high priest of our state church (as Luther intended). We also have high taxes and limitations on distribution of alcohol and tobacco.
And even though I'm a liberal atheist, and in general disagree that the state should have the right to tell me what to do, except when I'm in danger of hurting others, I must admit that it's these compromises between traditional conservative values, socialism values, and progressive liberal values that make our country a great place to live. You can of course argue where the line should go, but if the country was ruled by only progressives, only liberals, or only socialists, I think it would be a much worse place to live. (And uhm, yeah, in case you wondered, most socialists are against porn too...)
I'm sorry, I don't have 4.54 billion years to spend on something that might produce similar results. Besides, there's no guarantee we would understand that either. Could you suggest something faster and/or better/more predictable?
Please explain to me exactly which parts of semiconductor physics you consider to be following the laws of newtonian physics...
Just like we can "just" build a massive computer program to predict the weather, or the markets, or whatever. We are not having a total understanding of the brain, therefore we can't write a program emulating it. In order to gain a better understanding of the brain we do experiments with various kinds of circuits and hardware. Limiting ourselves to just experiment with Intel Core Duo processors seems a bit silly, even though they are Turing-complete (assuming that is sufficient). It would be like trying to discover the laws of optics through only experimenting with air and water, but never using glass, crystals, lasers, whatever...
Yeah, if you know what you're doing. We aren't. We are experimenting, trying to discover things. So tell me, who do you think would have the greatest chance of building a cottage in the woods using only an axe? A carpenter who has spent most of his life with hands-on construction techniques, or an engineer who knows how to create advanced models in autocad? Sometimes hands-on is the best way.
You would be surprised what some scientists believe. Some believe consciousness derives from God, small men inside our brain, metaphysical "souls", quantum processes, telephone switching boards, computer-like circuitry, whatever... The point is, they have no idea. So instead of arguing about that (like the ancient greeks argued about whether movement was real or not), these scientists proceed to build something that might give them a better understanding of certain aspects of the brains function.
Short answer: Hardcore pornography is outlawed, but somewhat tolerated in a round-about way. Softcore pornography is available at most major newsstands.
Long answer: Hardcore porn is defined as "genitals in movement". I'm not sure how this translates (legally) to still-images, but you know it when you see it. Possesion and import for private use of hardcore porn is legal, as is production (unless it's considered "pimping", which is illegal (prostitution is not)), or done in public, disturbing other people. Sale, distribution and broadcasting is illegal, but feel free to distribute it through a Swedish mail-order company, shop at the border, website, or even satellite-TV "aimed at" Sweden (You would be surprised how many Norwegians view certain channels with Swedish subtitles instead of Norwegian subtitles). Bestiality has the same legality as normal hardcore porn. I'm not sure about necrophilia. Pedo-porn is of course highly illegal either way. Exceptions about the "genitals in movement" rule has been made for "artistic" reasons by the film sensor bureau, but there is no danger that Vivid Video will be considered "artistic" any time soon (Lars von Trier is). There is some likelihood though, that a major trial with a pornographer can change all this (as Larry Flynt once did in USA). That this will change through a political prosess any time soon is unlikely, politicians don't want to be associated with porn, even though they may think otherwise privately.
Bottom line is: The amount of double standards in Norway is no different than the ones we usually criticize US for. Sad but true. However, there is no chance in hell that Norway will ever build a great firewall, like China. This is just a silly suggestion by a committee which has gotten lots of press because it's just so silly.
Obviously because Soviet wasn't conquered by a coalition of foreign military forces as the other examples you mention. (And besides, I think past sense is more than a little bit optimistic with regards to Afghanistand and Iraq).
First of all, the leaders who participated in the gulags, etc, did it as part of a legal government, according to the will of the party. If you want to really punish someone, you should go after Stalin, etc, but he is dead. Finally, if the people who took part in the former government are all hanged, what good would it do to Russia? A bloody revolution is not the right way to start a democratic reform, it's exactly what the Russian people wanted to get away from.
Nowhere. If people were imprisoned in gulag for e.g. political reasons, they should seek reparations from the russian government (or from other governments part of the Soviet union). Holding human rights trials serves little purpose when most of the perpetrators are dead long ago.
Yes.
Things like this are a result of international/american pressure against Russia to conform to internation/american copyright law. Trust me, the Russians would not put teachers in prison for software piracy if it wasn't for pressure outside Russia. That the Russians have kept some of their internment camps in Gulag (for regular prisoners, not political opponents), is no worse than the Americans still having the death penalty, a court-system where only poor people are guilty, Guantanamo, or the rumored secret detainment camp in Europe (Poland?).
It can be argued that the Russian government hasn't changed fundamentally since the Tsars either, and that the "communist" rule simply replaced the "tsar" with a "secretary general", and that the "democratic" rule simple replaced the "secretary general" with a "president". There are other fundamental problems within Russia than its communist heritage. Sure, the communist era was bad, but so has every other part of Russian history been.
The reason Siberia was mentioned was to appeal to emotion, and it's not absolutely clear that that's where he ends up anyway. And, I don't know how the Siberian detention camps are today. Are they better or worse than other Russian prisons? Maybe it's the closest prison (he was from a remote region)? Simply appealing to emotion can obviously be effective, but sometimes you have to use reason as well, when you want to judge what is best.
There's a difference? I thought he had just sampled the opening of the song. Well, you learn something every day...
Why would you need to advocate linux in 5 minutes?
Please, just stop saving the world by converting people to linux. This isn't christianity. Linus didn't say "GOTO the people of all nations and make them my disciples". Linux isn't the best solution for everybody, no matter what the problem was. It's an operating system that is a good choice for some people, and a bad choice for others. People should be able to make their own choice.
When?
OpenBSD
Who are "we"? Are you a representative of ICANN?
Again, who are "we"? Surely ICANN doesn't control wikipedia? And you can't be talking about humanity, as there are plenty of counterexamples. E.g. people looking for cheap apples won't find them at apple.com. So which group are you speaking on behalf of now?
That depends upon where you live. In e.g. Iceland, it would be a pretty typical occurrence. But we aren't talking about the real world here, we're talking about the virtual world known as Internet, and on the Internet, it's pretty common to find more than one person with the same name.
And analogies suck. So what?
Yes, please!
I'm only interested in sex, not .com. And if I can't have sex, I might choose to take my revenge upon humanity... (evil laughter). But seriously, I'm not interested in creating or selling pornography. I might use it for my own enjoyment, in private, but I don't think that has anything to do with this debate.
You may say that, but it is not the currently adopted policy of resolving domain name disputes. Furthermore, it wouldn't work because of domain squatters.
Lawsuits are not a problem with DNS, only with how it's managed.
FINAL WORDS: My goal is not to insert random alphanumerics into domain names. My goal is to keep people from getting the domain name they want. And I want to keep it away from everyone. That way, nobody can own common words anymore. Adding alphanumerics is just one proposal for reaching this goal.
No, it isn't. It's not a book. And it has nothing to do with phones, or phone-numbers. You can't browse it. You can't search it. There are no yellow pages. The closest analogy to a phone book for the Internet is google, not DNS.
No. Real DNS would mean that the names can't be "found". Real DNS would require you to already know the exact name for you to look it up. And you couldn't invent your own names, like "Mom", you would have to use full name and/or SSN to look up the phone number(s) of a person/residence/company.
Why? She already knows how to use 411, right? Besides, I was never suggesting sequences of 9 random alphanumericals.
Because there are plenty of other people who have just as much right to the name "coke" as the coca-coly company. Examples include suppliers of dry-destilled charcoal, columbian drug-cartels, people working to help coke-addicts, people who think the coca-cola company sucks, etc...
Actually, it's not named Apple Corp, it is named Apple Inc (and it was Apple Computer Inc until 8. jan 2007). Apart from that, I see very few problems with this. Many companies use different names when they register as a business, and when they conduct their business with real customers. If "Apple blaealkcaoer" is globally unique, it would be an improvement to something that is only unique within USA. They can still sell ipods with the brand name "Apple", or "Mac", or "Macintosh", or what the fuck they want. But the warranty should be from Apple blaealkcaoer.
Yup, that's why you are not just named David. While most of your friends probably use "David" or "Dave", when there is risk of confusion, "Masover" is added. If there are further risk of confusion, SSN can be used. Of course, SSNs doesn't work within USA, so your idea may still have some merit.
Nope, it's closer to saying: "I don't like big companies putting up billboards along the main roads, while other people with fewer resources, who has something to say, are not allowed to put their own billboards up. I suggest we place billboards everywhere, assign a modest fee for writing on it, and make sure there are enough billboards so that no one can afford to write on every one of them. There will still be billboards along the main roads, but you are just as likely to get your writing on one in the Sahara desert, at 300 feet depth in the sea, or somewhere in Siberia." Obviously this sounds ridiculous within the physical world, but DNS lives in the virtual world, and the economic cost of putting billboards everywhere, is for all practical purposes zero, and the environmental impact is none.
...I wonder where the debate stems from. Gentoo is a nice OS and all that, but it's not one that includes the features most server admins want: stability, non-intrusive security upgrades, support for commercial software, minimum hassle, minimum maintenance, and minimum surprises!
Of course, if you absolutely want to, Gentoo is perfectly capable of running on a server. It's just not something I would use myself, or recommend to any others. People who do so, do it because they are already Gentoo fans, not because it's the system that's arguably best for their purpose.
As of today, your mother is perfectly capable of using digits whenever she uses a phone. She probably even has one of those phone-books, and knows how to use it. I'm sure you can teach her to use google too. Using 216.64.210.31 is a bad idea, as IP numbers are dependent upon geographical location, hosting company, etc...
And the coca-cola company probably has enough money to repeat registering their name untill they come up with something more rememberable by chance. Hell, if they keep going on long enough, they could have coke.itis, coke.drink, or coke.coke, all of them way cooler than coke.com. Of course, they could have that too. All you need is ridiculous amounts of money, and patience. (But to avoid "ownership" of names, the names should be priced so that owning all combinations would exceed tha amount of money on earth). And with 5-letter domain-names, you can probably afford to weed out ridiculous combinations like c9xq9 before they are even sold.
The domain name system was never intended to be a global system in the way it is today. It grew out of a need to replace hosts.txt. As such, it made some sense at the time to have separate domains for .gov, .mil, .edu, .net, .com, and .org. They were all great friends back then, and didn't need to fight over domain names. Nobody expected soft-drink manufacturers to go to court to get "their" domain names. As the net grew larger, you were bound to have conflicts of people or companies that wanted the same name. Given that both of them are "right", the only sane solution is to make a system that guarantees nobody can "own" a name.
I disagree. There's no way we can get everyone to agree that the name "Apple" should point to a machine serving web-pages for the company Apple. There's plenty of other alternatives that are just as sensible. Such as that record-company by the Beatles, the worlds greatest web-resource for apple-farming and apple-recipes, or a web-site promoting a book about how apples improve your health, or whatever... And even if most people currently would agree that the name "Apple" should be owned by the company Apple, this may not be true in 100 years.
Having zero, or only a few top-level domains, is a recipe for quarrels, infighting, lawsuits, and whatever. There's no reason to advocate a "solution" that will guarantee trouble. Instead, NOBODY should get the special treatment. Geocities.com had the right idea with their district/streetname/number pathnames. At least for most people, these are easier to remember than ip-numbers (at least IPv6), and is equally fair towards everyone. Similarly, we should open up just about every possible TLD. 2-letter TLDs are currently reserved for countries. Allowing 0-letter or 1-letter TLDs would be unfair, as there are only a very limited supply. But three, four, five, six, and seven letter TLDs are all available. When people want to register a name, such as e.g. "coke", they get a random TLD, e.g. "coke.c9xq9". If they are not happy, they can try again. The important thing is that nobody will be allowed to ask specially for e.g. ".com", or ".xxx", and that there will be too many TLDs for it to be practical for any company to own them all (including microsoft).
Retractable cables can be used to make bombs too...
AFAIK, you don't have to pay to publish in nature. You have to pay to get yourself a number of nature (and every university library in the world does just that).
That being said, the publishers of nature has had tremendous power. As one of the most well-known and established scientific journals in the world, they have been able to more or less define what passes as good mainstream science (will get published by nature), and what passes as fringe theories (will not get published by nature). Now that that power is dwindling, it's no wonder they try desperately to cling to it....
Well, it's embarassingly short if we're talking about a dick. But size doesn't matter, right?
But they do have an idea of the tensile strength of a rope needed to stop a Boeing 747 in mid flight? At least with 10 cm, they can divide it by 2.54 cm/inch, and get the result in inches.
Most europeans know that an inch is about 2.5 cm. Surprisingly many know that it is 2.54 cm. This is because most europeans have to deal with inches in some few situations, because of american standards. Anyway, it's not particularly hard for an author to use both sane and american units. At least, it should be easier than to come up with these visualizations of passenger jet planes and citrus fruits.
I'm quite sure most people have heard about either 10 cm, or 4 inches. If they haven't, they probably aren't able to read either. Then again, yeah, if you manage to find someone who haven't seen a grapefruit, I'll bet (s)he doesn't recognize 10 cm or 4 inches either. And finally, grapefruit is a pretty non-typical example, as grapefruits actually tend to be about 10 cm. If you had said e.g. tomatoes, the size varies a lot more.
Exactly. You think of a bag of sugar as 1 kg. I usually buy unrefined sugar, which comes in 500g packages. So telling me to compare with a bag of sugar is totally useless. Other people might buy sugar in other quantities. And many have rarely considered the weight of the packages, as they usually handle opened packages, or use their own container to store sugar. Finally, some people never cook, and may not even know in what form sugar is retailed.
Correction: If you happen to run linux on an ia32 compatible platform, you can run most VSTs you don't need. If it's a VST you need, it will either fail to work, fail to run reliably, or show some other bugs that make it useless for you.
On the other hand, you can spend decades planning the perfect crime. The police can only spend as much as the budget allows (which is frequently ridiculously low). What keeps people from doing crime, is that people are generally good people, and don't want to harm anyone else. If we had to rely on fear of getting caught alone, the society would have broken down several millennia ago.
In general, you will get caught if your crime is important enough, or if you are stupid enough. The truly talentless idiotic morons who repeatedly do the same petty crimes over and over, will eventually be caught, no matter how petty crimes we talk about. The normally intelligent, or slightly below average intelligent people who do more major robberies, etc, will often get caught. And yeah, if your crime is really important, you may end up getting caught even if you are really smart. Like the unabomber. On the other hand, there are plenty of old people shoplifting who never get caught.
A reasonably intelligent criminal can assume that the people who observed him doesn't recognize him, because he's not a celebrity, and not in his home town, and is wearing some form of disguise, and is not wearing his normal clothes, and is driving a stolen car, and so on...
Relying on luck is stupid, but you can't consider all possibilities, as it's completely unpractical, even for law-abiding honest citizens. Nobody does that, instead we rely on chance, that the odds are in our favour. E.g whenever I get into traffic, I expect to live, because I assume I'm one of the lucky people who are not getting into an accident.
And saying that only smart people are honest people is wishful thinking. It might make you feel good, but that doesn't make it true. Saddam Hussein is just one example...
If you ever come up with such idiotic nonsense again, I promise I will kill 10,000 kittens and every Nobel Peace Prize winner still living! And remember, you will be responsible for that!
Uhmm, many terrorists already use their religious beliefs as justification for acts of terror. So no, your logic is faulty here. Furthermore, all terrorists doesn't share the same agenda. Having the bonus of a nuke go off in Mecca might attract the interests of israelian extremists in doing terrorist acts against America, for example. And then there's the question of what you define as a terrorist. With your idea, the American government would certainly qualify.
What's the point of fighting terrorists if you abandon civilized society?
Uhm...no. It is right for this guy to commit copyright infringement. In fact, in this digital age, pretty much any copyright infringement is ethically right! But in this particular case, it was right for a whole lot of other reasons as well.
I'm quite certain he was aware that he was operating in a legally murky area. Then again, even if the area was legally murky, he had the benefit of hindsight, as there were other people who had produced mixtapes before him, who did not get a SWAT team on their front door. Yeah, it sucks to be him, but nobody expects the spanish inquisition
Uhm, no. In string theory, strings are real. Just as in classical alchemy, the four elements: fire, air, water, earth; where real (as defined by Empedocle). Or as the atom was real for Leucippe of Milet. Or masses were real for Newton. Or the electron is real for you. Or an apple is real for me. That you fail to see strings as real is probably more of a limitation with your imagination, than a shortcoming of string theory.
Yes, the universe often turns out to be even more complex than we imagined.
To be called science, a new theory must predict stuff that we couldn't predict before. Furthermore, when tested in a laboratory (or in some other way), these predictions must be correct (or at least seem correct). Thus we are improving our predictions. I'm not sure what you mean by improving our observations, but surely they too have improved since Archimedes timed balls rolling on an incline using his pulse. And if a theory predicts things that don't really exist, the theory is per definition falsified, thus any theory of quantum gravity that depends on the existence of pink unicorns, will not be called science (unless you can use the theory to help looking for pink unicorns, and hopefully, eventually find one). Of course, a different theory of quantum gravity that makes the same predictions, but does not depend on the existence of pink unicorns would be preferable, if it existed.
As much as I like your theory, it's wrong. In all traditional businesses, management will look down upon everyone below them. Everyone (NOT just IT) will be asked to do the impossible, with inadequate tools/resources/budgets/whatever, as well as yelled at, abused, and accused of incompetence or lazyness whenever they fail to accomplish the arbitrary goals set by someone above them who have no idea of what the work actually is.
The only way out of this is to (a) become valuable enough as an employee that you can pretty much pick and choose jobs, so that the CEO would rather fire your boss than you; or (b) start your own business. Either way, it's a lot of effort, and the end result means you will have more responsability, which is just as tiring, just in another way. Either way, you can't have it all (unless you have really rich parents, and can live out of their pockets, but I'm sure there's disadvantages to that as well)
You're not familiar with the concept or irony, are you? The example you cited is Alanis Morisette irony, not irony as we usually mean it.
Yeah, that's obviously a good reason for preferring a system where there's no commonality...