Perhaps before anyone should be treated by a modern medical facility (I am looking at you cheney with your new heart) you must pledge you believe in science. Is this any different than requiring you to affirm your faith in god before taking comunion?
No, it wouldn't be any different. And that's why we shouldn't do it.
It's bad enough when people's religion interferes with their acceptance of science. Let's not make things worse by making the sciences be more like religion.
The answer to the question "if intelligent life is out there, where are they" will be "not here because we're boring and common"
I have a less optimistic view of things. I believe intelligent life is out there, basically because the probability of intelligent life, however small it could be (if it's small at all), is still greater than zero (we're here), and the universe in incredibly large.
That said, the universe is incredibly large. We're all separated by incredible distances, and our current science implies that traversing, or even meaningfully communicating through those vast distances may not be a solvable problem. I have this view that the universe is teeming with intelligent life, all of it doomed to spend the whole of their civilization life-spans in their little spherical islands, with nobody ever contacting anybody else...except maybe for the lucky few who may have evolved in different planets circling the same star.
Would you care to explain why despite supply being at an all time high just a few years ago, prices never came down to match?
Gas prices in the US have historically been as low as 1/4th of the cost in Europe. This is partially because we're such big consumers. China has recently caught up in demand, meaning that despite supply being at an all time high, worldwide demand has gone up a great deal more, even if US demand is down due to the recession.
Gas prices are, by the way, still way cheaper in the US than most other countries.
Yeah, but the $40 disc you can watch many times over. Even though watching a movie even just two times is unlikely.
Well, owning movies is not for you then.
On the other hand, except for movies I disliked (in which case, I don't buy them), I can't think of anything that I've watched only once. Of the stuff I own, I'm thinking 5-10 times. Hell, I went through TNG in its entirety at least 4 times over my lifetime. Many of the episodes I must have seen 20 times.
Generally speaking, if I'm talking about a movie with a friend, and I hear him say that he hasn't seen it, I say, "let's watch it, right now." So I end up watching the same movies multiple times with different people. I'm not saying you should do that, it's fine if you never want to see a movie after you already know what happens, but there are people for whom the buying model makes sense.
Really though it is not. If I had spent 5 years doing 100 hour weeks to build a business I would rather burn it down than put some fucking "club rat" or "thug" where a customer can ever see them. It just is not worth the risk to me. You can go get a job at a club or working with real thugs. Your rights end where they threaten mine.
I agree with you. I think that as the employer, you have the right to ask whatever questions you want.
That said, I also think the potential employees need to grow a spine and stop answering to unacceptable demands. You may think that how people live their lives outside work affects you, but there are plenty of people who can keep that aspect of their lives completely separate from their professional life. So when asked about their personal life, the answer for anything you do not wish to discuss is simply, "I'd rather not discuss that. These are my qualifications."
The answer to, "I'd like to see your facebook profile" is, "and I'd like to be billionaire and not have to go hunting for jobs. We can't all have what we want. I'd also like to not work for someone who would wish to invade my privacy in this way, and that's a goal I can actually achieve. Thanks for your time, but I'm not interested in the job."
Obviously, easier said then done if you need to pay the bills and feed the family, but there are tons of people who are not in a situation where they desperately need a job RIGHT NOW, and these people have no excuse to submit to unreasonable demands. You don't have to hire them, but they don't have to agree to work for you.
Is literally the new name. Am I the only one that thinks this is lame. Would Steve have ever okay this?
That's what I said about the iPad 2. This one actually does have an awesome new feature. The extra resolution is the only thing the iPad needed, and it's what nobody got with the iPad2.
We should put put the Federal government into cryo and store them in a satellite. They know so damned much about what we all "need" they should be stored for after the collision to come and save us all from our ignorance and post apocalyptic sensations of freedom.
But how would we pick them up to bring them back to the Earth? In a post-apocalyptic civilization, we would no access to vehicles capable of reaching orbit and they'd be stuck there...oooooh.
How exactly is it supposed to get better for consumers if the government forces companies to give everything they have to a competitor in order to get permission to buy another company?
Companies will stop spending on R&D because they will need to give all their research away for free if they want to buy another company.
Or, you know, it might discourage them from buying a competitor in order to keep the competitive advantage they got via their R&D. Which is the point. It's better for consumers to discourage acquisitions and keep the market as competitive as possible.
I have never understood the point of the (popular) concept of Occam's Razor, as it is simply not true that the less complicated of two alternatives is the better one. But in the limited sense you describe, it makes sense, albeit to no great practical purpose.
Well, I think it is of great practical purpose, although I do agree that it's a far more obvious conclusion. It's the reason why the heliocentric model should be chosen over the geocentric one. You can actually create a very complex set of equations to describe the motion of the other planets with the Earth at the center, as the reference location. Unlike another popular belief, there's nothing inherently wrong with that. You can be any point and define, "I will pick this point as the reference to all movement." That said, things get a lot easier when you pick the Sun, so you should do that. It's like choosing to use cylindrical coordinates to solve a math problem. Yes, you could solve all problems using cartesian coordinates, but it just works out better if you use cylindrical.
I think that the "simpler hypothesis is the most likely to be correct one" popular understanding came about because making things more complex than they need to be also does have the tendency to introduce errors. In the black box example I gave, even if the black box is adding a number and then subtracting another, how do I figure out which number it is adding and subtracting? Maybe I have that wrong, and it's 9 and 7, it's 115 and 113. So you get into the business of discussing parameters that you don't need and anything you picked might be in error anyway. Now, take moving from the geocentric to the heliocentric model. Not only is a lot simpler to figure out the motion of the planets, but now you can ask yourself, "why is it simpler? What makes it possible for me to drop all these variables and still arrive at the correct answer?" and eventually figure out that it's because gravitational pull is proportional to mass, so you get a "more correct result".
Of course, the reason I still fight that perception is because it's not always the case. Newton's Laws are a lot simpler than relativity. The reason we don't invoke Occam's and just use Newton's Laws is because, under certain conditions, they give different predictions and Einstein gives the correct one. So you always take the simpler model that explains all the facts, but if you need to add complexity in order to explain a behavior better, then that's what you do.
Occam's Razor only applies to two theories that give the exact same prediction. The moment they can be differentiated by testing hypotheses, you don't invoke Occam's Razor. You test the hypotheses.
But we do have two hypothesis:
(1) Titanic's lookouts were slacking / not doing their job properly, therefore there was no warning about the iceberg
or.. (2) Titanic's lookouts were fooled by this complicated weather phenomena that masked the iceberg from their view, therefore there was no warning about the iceberg
And they give different predictions. In particular, the authors claim that (2) explains something (1) does not, regarding Titanic's visibility by the Californian. So you can't just say "(1) is a simpler hypothesis than (2), let's go with that." You have to examine the claim and put it to the test. Can the visibility issue also be explained by (1)? If so, then you can invoke Occam's, assuming the authors' hypothesis don't make yet other claims that would also have to examine.
Occam's razor (or actually 'William of Ockham's razor') states that when faced with two solutions for the same problem, the simpler of the two solutions is more likely to be the correct one.
No, no, no, no. That's a huge pet peeve of mine, and it's what I was trying to correct. Occam's razor says NOTHING about correctness.
All it says is that if you've got two hypotheses that make the exact same predictions, there's no reason to use the one that involves more variables to arrive at your predictions. You take the simpler one, since it will give you the same answers anyway. The example I like to give, and have posted before on slashdot, is this:
You and I are given a black box that takes an integer input and returns an integer output. We are tasked with coming up with a hypothesis for the algorithm with the box. We give it the input 3 and it returns 5. We give it the input 7 and it returns 9. We give it 21 and it returns 23. You come up with the hypothesis, "the black box adds 2 to the input." I come up with the hypothesis, "the black box first adds 7 to the input, and then it subtracts 5." Both our theories of what the black box is doing internally give the same prediction for any input, and neither is getting invalidated by the input. In fact, if one of them gets invalidated by an output, so does the other. However, my hypothesis is unnecessarily more complex by adding an additional operation to arrive at the same prediction. That additional complexity also adds more questions. Does it really add 7 and subtract 5? Why not add 9 and then subtract 7? We could spend tons of time trying to figure out exactly what numbers it adds and subtracts when really, all we need to make the proper predictions is your simpler hypothesis.
Which one is actually correct? Who knows? And it doesn't matter if all our theory is meant to do is explain the output. Now let's say we introduce more tests. We consider how long the box takes to come up with the output, we have a comparison black box that we are assured has the same hardware, and we code the software for that second black box ourselves. We make it just add two to the input, and it gives us the output twice as fast. Now we have reason to believe that more than one operation is going on. We have something to differentiate the theories, and Occam's Razor no longer applies: different predictions are at work and your hypothesis predicts a faster computation time than my hypothesis.
When playing poker, the probability any individual has a pair is higher than the probability he has four of a kind. Therefore, by Occam's Razor, nobody has ever gotten a four of a kind.
Clearly the above doesn't make sense. What's more likely, that Occam's Razor is worthless or that you don't understand Occam's Razor?
Occam's Razor only applies to two theories that give the exact same prediction. The moment they can be differentiated by testing hypotheses, you don't invoke Occam's Razor. You test the hypotheses.
Give Lubuntu a try. It's a simple 'icons on the desktop with a task bar & start button' interface that I gave a try after getting pissed off at fluxbox when a couple of my dock apps kept dying on me. I've been screwin with it for about a week now, & no problems other than I still haven't figured out the knack of getting my dock apps to autostart. Just head over to lubuntu.net and check it out.
Google just made a deal to give Mozilla a billion dollars over the next three years. And you begrudge Mint some (by comparison) pocket change?
I don't begrudge anyone for trying to make money in free software. I begrudge the method used. If he wants google / yahoo / bing whatever to pay them to make it the default search engine, that's fine with me. If he says, "I'm going to actively make changes that will cause making your search engine the default one harder to do unless you pay me," that's bordering on extortion. I oppose it based on the same values that make me support net neutrality. I think it's wrong for my ISP to say, "I'm going to slow down your connection to bing, because Microsoft doesn't pay us and google does.
If you're trying to teach them to use Linux for general purposes, I'd go with Mint. It passes the Aunt Tilly test with flying colors in my experience
Because I kept getting people recommending Mint to those of us who were pissed off with Unity on Ubuntu, I gave it a try. I honestly don't understand what people like about it. Mint made me jump through hoops to get google as the default search engine in firefox because google doesn't pay mint to "send customers their way." I can understand getting paid to be the default option, but having to go through extra steps to make Google an option? That's an attempt at extortion, and I won't support it. There's no reason a search engine should pay you to not remove them from the default firefox options when you are building your distro.
It's not the only thing they did that seemed ethically dubious. I remember seeing this thing too. The impression I got from trying out their distro is that they are a bunch of money-grubbing assholes who need to be boycotted
Because free floating currencies are manipulated by central banks, not free markets, and their value always goes to zero because they cannot resist printing more and more of the stuff. You can't just print gold.
And the board of a corporation can always issue more stock. What's your point?
Not true. I bet you in 10,000 years if the human race is still around, gold will still be tradeable for anything used as a form of currency anywhere on the planet.
If in 10,000 years gold is still scarce, humanity doesn't deserve to be around. After that long a time, technology better be up to the point where your 3d printer can make you an object made of solid gold by fusing the air molecules around it. The only thing that should be worth anything is the energy to do all that.
People are quick to point out how worthless they think gold is.
No, nobody says gold is worthless. Many people, myself included, say that the *gold standard* is worthless. The same people supporting the gold standard are quick to tell you how the free market is the best method for setting prices, instead of any other price control, but when it comes to currency, floating it doesn't seem to be enough. What gives?
Not one of them would pass up the opportunity to grab a bunch of gold coins if they were just lying there.
I wouldn't pass up the opportunity to grab a bunch of bitcoins if they were just lying there, would you? It's not because I believe in bitcoins as a currency, but because right now I can sell them for money.
OMG, let's ban doctors, pilots, dentists plus every other profession requiring testing. It's done already, cheats are caught and when required you can bet better qualified and skilled people who gain competitive advantage will drive honest testing.
One of the dumbest thing I have ever seen your comment is tops "At least not until we can trust everyone not to cheat" cheats all over the place, that is why people go to so much trouble to catch them, we can fully trust the most incompetent to cheat the most.
The mind boggles that you think no testing is better than testing.
Welcome to politics.
A lot of people think it's easy, and the politicians should just do the obvious thing to fix all the problems. And then they get in a room with 10 other people and there are seven different people who think your "obvious" solution is stupid and they have the obvious answer. In fact, you'll have five different obvious answers between those seven people. You think they're nuts, and their solutions are clearly wrong.
Almost worse is trying to publish research in computer science that ties up a lot of approaches into a more general prescription. Who will review your paper? Why, the people who have a stake in the approaches you are generalizing. Now why would they want to allow your paper to succeed their "seminal" work?
I don't know how it is in CS, but with my anectodal experience in EE, there tends to be zero problems with that. Those people are generally happy that you're citing their paper, and if you advanced their work forward, they'll be just as happy to just publish another paper building on YOUR work.
Negative results is still pretty much impossible to publish though.
I'm only saying this so that others may learn from your mistake.
So says Forever Alone guy! Yes, it's a mistake to trust anybody. By trust nobody you can ensure your heart remains perfectly safe and you, perfectly alone. This guy decided to take a risk, and yes, maybe in this one case it didn't work out for him, but at least he tries to have someone in his life who's last name isn't JPEG.
This has nothing to do trust. I trust my parents with my life, I don't share my accounts with them. Not because I think they would do anything wrong with them, merely because it's not theirs. You can love someone, trust someone, and be with someone without giving up your individuality in favor of being a single entity called a "couple". Any partner who doesn't understand that I need to have a life separate from hers is not someone I want to share my life with...precisely because she wouldn't be asking me to share in my life, she'd be asking me to give it up.
By all means, share some things. Open a joint bank account, which you use to pay the bills and spend on household expenses. Agree on how it will be funded. Also keep an individual account for each of you, so you can make purchases for you without starting a fight on whether we should be spending money on shoes / dresses / video games / HD TV's right now. Keep a family e-mail account if you want, but also keep an individual one. Why would she need the password to my personal e-mail account? If she wants to read my e-mais because she suspects I'm hiding something, there's already a lack of trust and the relationship is doomed. And keep your facebook account to yourself. Why share a password? Just set your relationship status, all is good.
I'd be all for this if it wasn't for the fact that said people would eventually start sucking up my tax dollars.
I understand the sentiment, but they're already sucking up your tax dollars. The question is merely how would you rather it be spent. It could be spent dealing with the consequences of people who got addicted because we didn't make it illegal for them to access the drugs, or it could be spent on enforcement and punishment for people using drugs we've made illegal AND dealing with the consequences of people who got addicted because they managed to get the drugs anyway.
The DEA does do a lot of important things. As a pharmacy tech, we often worked with the DEA to put a stop to both customers passing phoney prescriptions, and doctors giving massive prescriptions for controlled substances to anyone.
Whether that's an important thing is debatable. Some of us don't like the concept of "controlled substances" and believe that anyone who wants to take anything should have the right to take it. Yes, it might screw up their life, and even kill them. Personal responsibility is about being able to do something wrong and choosing not to do it. Alternatively, paying the consequence if you're too stupid to think ahead.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps before anyone should be treated by a modern medical facility (I am looking at you cheney with your new heart) you must pledge you believe in science. Is this any different than requiring you to affirm your faith in god before taking comunion?
No, it wouldn't be any different. And that's why we shouldn't do it.
It's bad enough when people's religion interferes with their acceptance of science. Let's not make things worse by making the sciences be more like religion.
The answer to the question "if intelligent life is out there, where are they" will be "not here because we're boring and common"
I have a less optimistic view of things. I believe intelligent life is out there, basically because the probability of intelligent life, however small it could be (if it's small at all), is still greater than zero (we're here), and the universe in incredibly large.
That said, the universe is incredibly large. We're all separated by incredible distances, and our current science implies that traversing, or even meaningfully communicating through those vast distances may not be a solvable problem. I have this view that the universe is teeming with intelligent life, all of it doomed to spend the whole of their civilization life-spans in their little spherical islands, with nobody ever contacting anybody else...except maybe for the lucky few who may have evolved in different planets circling the same star.
As for the importance of our respective footballs, is the championship game of your football season essentially a national holiday?
Back when I lived in Brazil, during a World Cup business and school would close and let employees / students go home before every Brazil game!
Yes, soccer is considered much more important elsewhere than football is here.
Would you care to explain why despite supply being at an all time high just a few years ago, prices never came down to match?
Gas prices in the US have historically been as low as 1/4th of the cost in Europe. This is partially because we're such big consumers. China has recently caught up in demand, meaning that despite supply being at an all time high, worldwide demand has gone up a great deal more, even if US demand is down due to the recession.
Gas prices are, by the way, still way cheaper in the US than most other countries.
Yeah, but the $40 disc you can watch many times over. Even though watching a movie even just two times is unlikely.
Well, owning movies is not for you then.
On the other hand, except for movies I disliked (in which case, I don't buy them), I can't think of anything that I've watched only once. Of the stuff I own, I'm thinking 5-10 times. Hell, I went through TNG in its entirety at least 4 times over my lifetime. Many of the episodes I must have seen 20 times.
Generally speaking, if I'm talking about a movie with a friend, and I hear him say that he hasn't seen it, I say, "let's watch it, right now." So I end up watching the same movies multiple times with different people. I'm not saying you should do that, it's fine if you never want to see a movie after you already know what happens, but there are people for whom the buying model makes sense.
Really though it is not. If I had spent 5 years doing 100 hour weeks to build a business I would rather burn it down than put some fucking "club rat" or "thug" where a customer can ever see them. It just is not worth the risk to me. You can go get a job at a club or working with real thugs. Your rights end where they threaten mine.
I agree with you. I think that as the employer, you have the right to ask whatever questions you want.
That said, I also think the potential employees need to grow a spine and stop answering to unacceptable demands. You may think that how people live their lives outside work affects you, but there are plenty of people who can keep that aspect of their lives completely separate from their professional life. So when asked about their personal life, the answer for anything you do not wish to discuss is simply, "I'd rather not discuss that. These are my qualifications."
The answer to, "I'd like to see your facebook profile" is, "and I'd like to be billionaire and not have to go hunting for jobs. We can't all have what we want. I'd also like to not work for someone who would wish to invade my privacy in this way, and that's a goal I can actually achieve. Thanks for your time, but I'm not interested in the job."
Obviously, easier said then done if you need to pay the bills and feed the family, but there are tons of people who are not in a situation where they desperately need a job RIGHT NOW, and these people have no excuse to submit to unreasonable demands. You don't have to hire them, but they don't have to agree to work for you.
Is literally the new name. Am I the only one that thinks this is lame. Would Steve have ever okay this?
That's what I said about the iPad 2. This one actually does have an awesome new feature. The extra resolution is the only thing the iPad needed, and it's what nobody got with the iPad2.
We should put put the Federal government into cryo and store them in a satellite. They know so damned much about what we all "need" they should be stored for after the collision to come and save us all from our ignorance and post apocalyptic sensations of freedom.
But how would we pick them up to bring them back to the Earth? In a post-apocalyptic civilization, we would no access to vehicles capable of reaching orbit and they'd be stuck there...oooooh.
Ahem, carry on.
How exactly is it supposed to get better for consumers if the government forces companies to give everything they have to a competitor in order to get permission to buy another company?
Companies will stop spending on R&D because they will need to give all their research away for free if they want to buy another company.
Or, you know, it might discourage them from buying a competitor in order to keep the competitive advantage they got via their R&D. Which is the point. It's better for consumers to discourage acquisitions and keep the market as competitive as possible.
Yes, you could solve all problems using cartesian coordinates, but it just works out better if you use cylindrical.
And, of course, I mean "if you use cylindrical in cases where the problem is simplified by doing so."
I have never understood the point of the (popular) concept of Occam's Razor, as it is simply not true that the less complicated of two alternatives is the better one. But in the limited sense you describe, it makes sense, albeit to no great practical purpose.
Well, I think it is of great practical purpose, although I do agree that it's a far more obvious conclusion. It's the reason why the heliocentric model should be chosen over the geocentric one. You can actually create a very complex set of equations to describe the motion of the other planets with the Earth at the center, as the reference location. Unlike another popular belief, there's nothing inherently wrong with that. You can be any point and define, "I will pick this point as the reference to all movement." That said, things get a lot easier when you pick the Sun, so you should do that. It's like choosing to use cylindrical coordinates to solve a math problem. Yes, you could solve all problems using cartesian coordinates, but it just works out better if you use cylindrical.
I think that the "simpler hypothesis is the most likely to be correct one" popular understanding came about because making things more complex than they need to be also does have the tendency to introduce errors. In the black box example I gave, even if the black box is adding a number and then subtracting another, how do I figure out which number it is adding and subtracting? Maybe I have that wrong, and it's 9 and 7, it's 115 and 113. So you get into the business of discussing parameters that you don't need and anything you picked might be in error anyway. Now, take moving from the geocentric to the heliocentric model. Not only is a lot simpler to figure out the motion of the planets, but now you can ask yourself, "why is it simpler? What makes it possible for me to drop all these variables and still arrive at the correct answer?" and eventually figure out that it's because gravitational pull is proportional to mass, so you get a "more correct result".
Of course, the reason I still fight that perception is because it's not always the case. Newton's Laws are a lot simpler than relativity. The reason we don't invoke Occam's and just use Newton's Laws is because, under certain conditions, they give different predictions and Einstein gives the correct one. So you always take the simpler model that explains all the facts, but if you need to add complexity in order to explain a behavior better, then that's what you do.
Occam's Razor only applies to two theories that give the exact same prediction. The moment they can be differentiated by testing hypotheses, you don't invoke Occam's Razor. You test the hypotheses.
But we do have two hypothesis:
(1) Titanic's lookouts were slacking / not doing their job properly, therefore there was no warning about the iceberg
or.. (2) Titanic's lookouts were fooled by this complicated weather phenomena that masked the iceberg from their view,
therefore there was no warning about the iceberg
And they give different predictions. In particular, the authors claim that (2) explains something (1) does not, regarding Titanic's visibility by the Californian. So you can't just say "(1) is a simpler hypothesis than (2), let's go with that." You have to examine the claim and put it to the test. Can the visibility issue also be explained by (1)? If so, then you can invoke Occam's, assuming the authors' hypothesis don't make yet other claims that would also have to examine.
Occam's razor (or actually 'William of Ockham's razor') states that when faced with two solutions for the same problem, the simpler of the two solutions is more likely to be the correct one.
No, no, no, no. That's a huge pet peeve of mine, and it's what I was trying to correct. Occam's razor says NOTHING about correctness.
All it says is that if you've got two hypotheses that make the exact same predictions, there's no reason to use the one that involves more variables to arrive at your predictions. You take the simpler one, since it will give you the same answers anyway. The example I like to give, and have posted before on slashdot, is this:
You and I are given a black box that takes an integer input and returns an integer output. We are tasked with coming up with a hypothesis for the algorithm with the box. We give it the input 3 and it returns 5. We give it the input 7 and it returns 9. We give it 21 and it returns 23. You come up with the hypothesis, "the black box adds 2 to the input." I come up with the hypothesis, "the black box first adds 7 to the input, and then it subtracts 5." Both our theories of what the black box is doing internally give the same prediction for any input, and neither is getting invalidated by the input. In fact, if one of them gets invalidated by an output, so does the other. However, my hypothesis is unnecessarily more complex by adding an additional operation to arrive at the same prediction. That additional complexity also adds more questions. Does it really add 7 and subtract 5? Why not add 9 and then subtract 7? We could spend tons of time trying to figure out exactly what numbers it adds and subtracts when really, all we need to make the proper predictions is your simpler hypothesis.
Which one is actually correct? Who knows? And it doesn't matter if all our theory is meant to do is explain the output. Now let's say we introduce more tests. We consider how long the box takes to come up with the output, we have a comparison black box that we are assured has the same hardware, and we code the software for that second black box ourselves. We make it just add two to the input, and it gives us the output twice as fast. Now we have reason to believe that more than one operation is going on. We have something to differentiate the theories, and Occam's Razor no longer applies: different predictions are at work and your hypothesis predicts a faster computation time than my hypothesis.
What's more likely?
When playing poker, the probability any individual has a pair is higher than the probability he has four of a kind. Therefore, by Occam's Razor, nobody has ever gotten a four of a kind.
Clearly the above doesn't make sense. What's more likely, that Occam's Razor is worthless or that you don't understand Occam's Razor?
Occam's Razor only applies to two theories that give the exact same prediction. The moment they can be differentiated by testing hypotheses, you don't invoke Occam's Razor. You test the hypotheses.
Give Lubuntu a try. It's a simple 'icons on the desktop with a task bar & start button' interface that I gave a try after getting pissed off at fluxbox when a couple of my dock apps kept dying on me. I've been screwin with it for about a week now, & no problems other than I still haven't figured out the knack of getting my dock apps to autostart. Just head over to lubuntu.net and check it out.
Thanks for the suggestion, I will look into it.
Google just made a deal to give Mozilla a billion dollars over the next three years. And you begrudge Mint some (by comparison) pocket change?
I don't begrudge anyone for trying to make money in free software. I begrudge the method used. If he wants google / yahoo / bing whatever to pay them to make it the default search engine, that's fine with me. If he says, "I'm going to actively make changes that will cause making your search engine the default one harder to do unless you pay me," that's bordering on extortion. I oppose it based on the same values that make me support net neutrality. I think it's wrong for my ISP to say, "I'm going to slow down your connection to bing, because Microsoft doesn't pay us and google does.
If you're trying to teach them to use Linux for general purposes, I'd go with Mint. It passes the Aunt Tilly test with flying colors in my experience
Because I kept getting people recommending Mint to those of us who were pissed off with Unity on Ubuntu, I gave it a try. I honestly don't understand what people like about it. Mint made me jump through hoops to get google as the default search engine in firefox because google doesn't pay mint to "send customers their way." I can understand getting paid to be the default option, but having to go through extra steps to make Google an option? That's an attempt at extortion, and I won't support it. There's no reason a search engine should pay you to not remove them from the default firefox options when you are building your distro.
It's not the only thing they did that seemed ethically dubious. I remember seeing this thing too. The impression I got from trying out their distro is that they are a bunch of money-grubbing assholes who need to be boycotted
Because free floating currencies are manipulated by central banks, not free markets, and their value always goes to zero because they cannot resist printing more and more of the stuff. You can't just print gold.
And the board of a corporation can always issue more stock. What's your point?
Not true. I bet you in 10,000 years if the human race is still around, gold will still be tradeable for anything used as a form of currency anywhere on the planet.
If in 10,000 years gold is still scarce, humanity doesn't deserve to be around. After that long a time, technology better be up to the point where your 3d printer can make you an object made of solid gold by fusing the air molecules around it. The only thing that should be worth anything is the energy to do all that.
People are quick to point out how worthless they think gold is.
No, nobody says gold is worthless. Many people, myself included, say that the *gold standard* is worthless. The same people supporting the gold standard are quick to tell you how the free market is the best method for setting prices, instead of any other price control, but when it comes to currency, floating it doesn't seem to be enough. What gives?
Not one of them would pass up the opportunity to grab a bunch of gold coins if they were just lying there.
I wouldn't pass up the opportunity to grab a bunch of bitcoins if they were just lying there, would you? It's not because I believe in bitcoins as a currency, but because right now I can sell them for money.
OMG, let's ban doctors, pilots, dentists plus every other profession requiring testing. It's done already, cheats are caught and when required you can bet better qualified and skilled people who gain competitive advantage will drive honest testing.
One of the dumbest thing I have ever seen your comment is tops "At least not until we can trust everyone not to cheat" cheats all over the place, that is why people go to so much trouble to catch them, we can fully trust the most incompetent to cheat the most.
The mind boggles that you think no testing is better than testing.
Welcome to politics.
A lot of people think it's easy, and the politicians should just do the obvious thing to fix all the problems. And then they get in a room with 10 other people and there are seven different people who think your "obvious" solution is stupid and they have the obvious answer. In fact, you'll have five different obvious answers between those seven people. You think they're nuts, and their solutions are clearly wrong.
Why can't everyone see it my way??
Almost worse is trying to publish research in computer science that ties up a lot of approaches into a more general prescription. Who will review your paper? Why, the people who have a stake in the approaches you are generalizing. Now why would they want to allow your paper to succeed their "seminal" work?
I don't know how it is in CS, but with my anectodal experience in EE, there tends to be zero problems with that. Those people are generally happy that you're citing their paper, and if you advanced their work forward, they'll be just as happy to just publish another paper building on YOUR work.
Negative results is still pretty much impossible to publish though.
Use less energy and use it more efficiently.
Which unluckily is not what energy producers want.
It's ok. I'll use enough energy to far offset whatever you conserve.
I'm only saying this so that others may learn from your mistake.
So says Forever Alone guy! Yes, it's a mistake to trust anybody. By trust nobody you can ensure your heart remains perfectly safe and you, perfectly alone. This guy decided to take a risk, and yes, maybe in this one case it didn't work out for him, but at least he tries to have someone in his life who's last name isn't JPEG.
This has nothing to do trust. I trust my parents with my life, I don't share my accounts with them. Not because I think they would do anything wrong with them, merely because it's not theirs. You can love someone, trust someone, and be with someone without giving up your individuality in favor of being a single entity called a "couple". Any partner who doesn't understand that I need to have a life separate from hers is not someone I want to share my life with...precisely because she wouldn't be asking me to share in my life, she'd be asking me to give it up.
By all means, share some things. Open a joint bank account, which you use to pay the bills and spend on household expenses. Agree on how it will be funded. Also keep an individual account for each of you, so you can make purchases for you without starting a fight on whether we should be spending money on shoes / dresses / video games / HD TV's right now. Keep a family e-mail account if you want, but also keep an individual one. Why would she need the password to my personal e-mail account? If she wants to read my e-mais because she suspects I'm hiding something, there's already a lack of trust and the relationship is doomed. And keep your facebook account to yourself. Why share a password? Just set your relationship status, all is good.
I'd be all for this if it wasn't for the fact that said people would eventually start sucking up my tax dollars.
I understand the sentiment, but they're already sucking up your tax dollars. The question is merely how would you rather it be spent. It could be spent dealing with the consequences of people who got addicted because we didn't make it illegal for them to access the drugs, or it could be spent on enforcement and punishment for people using drugs we've made illegal AND dealing with the consequences of people who got addicted because they managed to get the drugs anyway.
The DEA does do a lot of important things. As a pharmacy tech, we often worked with the DEA to put a stop to both customers passing phoney prescriptions, and doctors giving massive prescriptions for controlled substances to anyone.
Whether that's an important thing is debatable. Some of us don't like the concept of "controlled substances" and believe that anyone who wants to take anything should have the right to take it. Yes, it might screw up their life, and even kill them. Personal responsibility is about being able to do something wrong and choosing not to do it. Alternatively, paying the consequence if you're too stupid to think ahead.