Except it was a product, it was a license. A revokable license. I'm pretty sure this is an exact example of why the GPL and copyleft is so important.
At the very least it's an example of the evils of DRM. This is why legitimate customers should be wary of software that needs to phone home to work. It places you at the mercy of the company in question. Meanwhile the pirates don't have to deal with these problems.
If you don't wish to associate with dicks, you avoid them right?
Well, EA decided they didn't want to associate with this dick anymore.
That's fine and dandy, but that's not all they did. If I sell a product to someone, and then decide that that someone is a dick, I can't demand that he can no longer use the product I sold him. It's even more wrong to do that without giving that person a refund.
This isn't about banishing him from the forum and the store. It's their forum and their store, it's hard to argue against that. The problem is that the consequences of banning him from the forum and the store was the inability to use a product he gave EA money for.
I own over 200 games on Steam. I can play any one of them anytime. I have purchased well over 1000 games over the course of my life - except I can't find majority of them, the rest have scratched up disks, lost CDkeys, lost manuals and hard to find patches.
I'll grant you that having an automatic remote backup over everything you have is nice, but that's not an advantage over physical media. That's an advantage to having backups. Of course, thanks to all the pirates who use the term "backup" to mean "pirate" that word is made fun of by people who use it seriously, but your example is an example of why people like me have always done real, actual, backups. Where is every game I've ever bought? Attic. That said, their images are easily accessible on my network drive, along with a folder for each game that contains the patches, executables, and nocd patches for games with DRM. I don't pirate shit, but I do make legitimate backups, and that's why.
Now you're going to say, "that's a lot of work. I didn't have to do anything, and I have my remote backup." You're right. Of course, when steam starts supporting some of your games and you can no longer download them, I'll point out that I still have access to my stuff, because I control the backup. Before you say, "they'll never do that," I'll say that I used to believe you. I have a ps3, and I bought a bunch of games from psn, which had similar terms as to the ones you describe. Then the latest terms of service mentioned that they're allowed to remove games from the network at any time, and if you don't have them in your ps3 for any reason, tough. You don't get your money back. Now, Valve isn't Sony, but what guarantee do you have that they won't update the terms of service to something that screws you in the future? With the physical media and my own personal backup, I'm 100% guaranteed to always have a working copy.
>> Being a dick says a lot about your character, but other than alienating yourself from people who don't want to be around dicks, it really should carry no consequences whatsoever. (emphasis mine)
Oh gawd, not again. In Spanish we have a saying that, roughly translated, means "If my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a bicycle."
The intended meaning is that, it doesn't matter how much you wish for something to be true, or how much you think it should be so, the real world has a tendency of existing without fulfilling your expectations.
I'm sure some people think that performing any action should also come with no consequences whatsoever, or that everything should be free for anybody to take. However, that's not how the real world works, at least not the civilized world.
-dZ.
I'm not sure I understand what point you're trying to make here. That there's a difference between something that "should happen" and "does happen"? I know that, and I chose the word "should" for a reason. That the real world doesn't behave like it "should"? I know that too, but the proper response to it isn't to ignore unfair events, it's to try to change the world. You're never going to reach perfection, but aiming for it is the only way to get closer.
Maybe your point is that people believe unreasonable things, and that there should be more dire consequences to being a dick in a forum? I'm willing to entertain that, but you you haven't offered any arguments to support that particular position. As for harsh consequences in a "civilized world" the real question you need to answer is, "should the consequences for being a dick in a forum involve blocking access to something you have paid money for?" Because I don't think it works that way in the civilized world.
Well, good. Dicks need a solid pounding from time to time, to remind them that throwing down has consequences online as well as in meatspace.
Being a dick says a lot about your character, but other than alienating yourself from people who don't want to be around dicks, it really should carry no consequences whatsoever. Hell, I think your comment is quite dickish, but I don't think you should be banned from posting to slashdot because of it, much less banned from using all the other Geeknet sites, like sourceforge. However, such a drastic move would be analogous to what happened to this particular guy.
The notification system I just have never gotten used to. Why must I be notified of new IM's by seeing the IM text, but when I go to try to get rid of it, it fades out.
I believe that settings for everything should exist so that you can set things up to your personal liking. That said, for the notification behavior that they've set as default, you're not supposed to try to get rid of it. You're supposed to look at it, read the text message, and ignore it until it fades, while keeping doing your thing. Unless you want to reply, but the point of the notification isn't to help you reply, it's to help you decide whether you want to stop what you're doing and actually reply.
I like it a lot. That said, I completely see your point in that you want it to do something else, and there should be an easy way that you could change the behavior so that it does what you want it to do.
If you take an android device with google voice installed. Tell it use google voice for all calls. The get an Xlink device (http://www.myxlink.com/index.aspx). Peer the XLink to your android device via bluetooth. Now you have analog dial tone coming out of the XLink and you can put it into a PBX or regular analog phones.
Dude, the entire point is not needing to have a phone other than the google voice number.
Things like confidence in special teams and relative tiredness aren't really that predictive.
I suppose it matters whether we're talking college football or NFL, there. Being a gamecock, I definitely know that "confidence in special teams" is very predictive. Sometimes you have a team where your special team sucks. Sometimes you have a kicker that can't reliably kick extra points, let alone long field goals. Go for fourth down more often there. Other times you have a kicker that can reliably kick 50-yard field goals. Go for those more often when that's the case. Relative tiredness can also make a pretty big difference in college football. I honestly know NOTHING about the pros, I don't watch them. I can see how it would matter less among them, though.
If you build a model (pretty much no matter how you build it) and compare it to what coaches actually do, you'll find that in general, coaches don't go for it on fourth down nearly as often as they should...And it wouldn't be hard for them to do a lot better than they do. Saying that there are a lot of variables is just their weak excuse for not believing in the math.
I'll take your word for it, but I think you misinterpreted me (or I wasn't clear enough). The point of my post is that humans are notoriously bad at judging probabilities when there are a lot of variables. They give more importance to some things over others when there's no reason to do so. Emotions get in the way. Sometimes you're pumped up, and you're going to be more aggressive than you should. Other times you've been beaten, your morale is low, and you're going to be way more cautious than you should. That's what I meant with, "consequently, that's also why they think a computer would be good at making these decisions." You can place your model in there, and give it all the variables. It's likely to do a better job. It's not as simple as, "go for it on fourth more often," but I very much agree that it's possible that a model that does a better job computing these probabilities would end up being more aggressive. It seems you've done some research there, and that's the case. I haven't, so I'll take your word for it.
If a play increases that probability on average, it's the correct play no matter how risky it is.
True, but going for it on fourth down doesn't always increase that probability on average. If you fail, you give the opposing team good ball position which increases their chance of scoring. If you're behind, they increase their lead, if you're ahead you decrease your lead. If you're in a position where the field advantage to the opposing team isn't very high, then you're probably also in a position where you can score a field goal.
The entire point is trying to determine whether going for it increases or decreases your chances of winning the game. There are many variables involved. What's the position in the field? What's the score? How much time do you have left? What's your confidence level in your special teams, defense, and offense? How tired is your defense relative to your offense, how much time have they spent on the field? Based on how your offense has been playing against this particular defense, how likely is it that you're going to get the yards you need?
Consequently, that's also why they think a computer would be good at making these decisions:)
How is this different from having an agent sit in a car across the street and follow the car whenever it moves? Are FBI agents not allowed to make use of technology to make their jobs more efficient?
It's different in that when they're following you around, they didn't have to plant a device in your property.
Interesting/informative isn't the defining characteristic of an encyclopedia, though. I mean, my PhD thesis is interesting, but it's not going up there. Encyclopedias are about a different kind of content, specifically a review of a subject. They've at least reached a useful metric for suitability with the guideline that articles should have proper secondary sources. That, IMO, should be the sole criterion - "can you write a properly referenced review of this subject?".
I agree with you. And I would have absolutely no problem with the conclusions from your Ph.D thesis being placed in the relevant entry for the topic your thesis deals with. Then your thesis would be cited as a reference.
The problem is that the deletionists are trying to put limits on the subject matter. I don't give a shit whether the topic of your dissertation is in Quantum Theory or Buffy Studies, as long as it follows your criteria of "properly referenced review of the subject." They want to be able to say, "this topic isn't important enough to be part of the encyclopedia," and they have no reason for doing that. It's not like they have some sort of space limit. Subject importance is relative. If I'm searching for it, it's important to me.
How is "research finds that electric fields help neurons fire" related to quantum entanglement? You don't need quantum mechanics to describe electromagnetic fields. Maxwell came up with his equations long before there was such a thing as quantum theory.
All matter is subject to quantum field effects. Human bodies are composed of matter. Is it really such a stretch to wonder if humans really do experience entanglement all the time, such as when you think about someone just before they do call?
Erm, how did you know it wasn't doing what it was supposed to do if you didn't first know what it was supposed to do?
You know what the overarching program is supposed to do, and it's not doing it, so you look at the code. You don't know which part of the code is doing what and what approach is being used to accomplish the task until you look at it. You don't know what the original coder meant to do with that individual section of code unless he has commented it (or you managed to figure it out, but if the code is wrong in the first place, you might have problems doing that).
That's just a standard acronym, not a backronym. Backronyms use the acronym as a word in the full phrase. For example: WINE: WINE Is Not an Emulator.
No. Backronyms are acronyms where the phrase was created such that it fits whatever the acronym they desired happened to be, instead of actually appropriately naming something and then figuring out what the acronym is.
What you're thinking of is a recursive acronym. You can also have recursive backronyms.
Funny how we go to extremes to prevent individuals from accessing our email, but have no problem with the same email being read by Google (either systematically for targeted ads or from a government subpena).
If it's really that sensitive, encrypt it.
As I've mentioned to another poster, encryption protects the contents of your message, but not the identity of your contacts. Finding out e-mail addresses of other people you're communicating with gives them other accounts to try to perform surveillance on.
gnupg prevents someone from reading the e-mail, but if they get access to your account, gnupg won't help prevent people from figuring out who you're communicating with. The headers are still in the clear, they have to be.
While I have to applaud Google for trying to keep their users' accounts safe, I have to say that this idea is really untenable. Not everyone has a cellphone, not everyone with a phone carries it all of the time, and you might not always have reception. Just this last summer, I had a month-long internship in Nebraska. The town I stayed at had zero reception on Sprint's network and the nearest cell tower was over an hour away. So, for the entire month, I was without a phone. And last February, I was in Switzerland, where again, I had no cell service.
Furthermore, if my bank can authenticate me without requiring an SMS, then certainly my email provider can do the same.
This isn't meant for the average joe. It's meant for people with sensitive e-mails. If you think a totalitarian government might be going after you because you're part of a human rights organization, then signing up for two-factor authentication is for you. If your e-mail is basically your friends sending you stupid chain e-mails, then it's not. After all, I do have my cell phone with me all the time, and I don't ever want the inconvenience of two-factor authentication precisely because I carry my cell phone with me all the time: I never go to the gmail web page, I use imap and check my mail with my phone's client (or rather, my phone's client tells me when I have mail).
the american president is not going to cut off the internet and start goose stepping around the white house. this ranks right up there with other paranoid schizophrenic fantasies like rednecks with guns in the woods are going to save us from fascism. please stop mentioning the american internet kill switch in the same sentence as egypt, china, or iran. its just... dumb
we live in an abused, yes, compromised, yes, but still functioning democracy. meaning rule is by consent, not force and fear...
Goddamnit, dude. Way to miss the point. Nobody, and I mean absolutely nobody, is saying the US is as bad as Egypt or China. What we do say when we compare the proposal for the kill switch in the US with what happened in Egypt is that we don't want to move in that direction. It's not that we fear tomorrow the President is going to go dictator on us...it's that we don't want to make it any easier for this to one day happen, even 200 or 400 years from now.
but fear is not how it works in the usa. really, mr. snarky teenager. do you feel afraid criticizing the us government on slashdot? oh, why not? maybe because you have that right AND THAT RIGHT IS RESPECTED.
Exactly. So now is the time to use those rights. You're not supposed to wait until we become a dictatorship to start criticizing your government when it moves in a direction of increased government power. By that point it's far too late, and it's very difficult to turn back. You have those rights now for a reason, and maintaining vigilance is the fucking reason. Stop saying, "we're not as bad as China." That's not something to be proud of. We know we're not as bad as China, but the bar isn't set that low. Once we can point to anything at all in our government that is remotely similar to what governments with less freedoms are doing it's time to stop and think about the direction we're moving in.
When you're talking about what it is that you're going to see in the sky, it is the only thing that is relevant.
One of the most interesting things you can explain to someone who doesn't understand cosmological scale is that the further away a light source is, the further back in time you're looking. Ignoring this fact and playing make-believe with your data because its convenient eventually causes errors in assumptions on a larger scale.
Nobody's "playing make-believe" with the data. It's simply about choosing what's important for the case at hand. Being pedantic about saying, "the star isn't going to go nova soon, it has in fact already gone nova long ago" is about as stupid as calculating the kinetic energy of a car traveling at 60 mph using the equations of relativity. Newton's equations are "incorrect", but goddamnit, for the case you're studying the difference doesn't matter.
In this case, if we do it your way and you tell me that Betelgeuse has probably gone nova about 600 years ago, that's not enough information. I'm going to have to ask you, "how far away is Betelgeuse?" in order to figure out if we have historic records of it going nova that I can look up, or if it's going to happen soon in the future, or if it's not going to happen anytime in my lifetime. If we do it my away and say, "SN 393" went nova in 393 AD you've given me the information I actually care about, and can look up the record of Chinese astronomers recording the star that suddenly appeared. In fact, that's why actual astronomers, as in the people who actually study these things for a living, treat it this way, and it's why the supernova SN 393 is fucking called SN 393. SN for supernova, 393 for when the event was observable on Earth.
Why would this be anybody's business other than the parents?
And why is any of this anyone's business other than the parents? The kid cheated. The company provided proof to the parents. Case closed. The proof, the parents response or the scenarios in question are none of your business either.
No argument with that, you're right. However, the cheating problem not being anybody's business doesn't suddenly make the "kid is too young to be playing violent video games" everybody's business. The reporter should be saying, "not interested in the story," he shouldn't be finding more irrelevant questions to ask.
For the reporter to ask: "What's your autistic 11 year old doing spending all his time playing Mature rated games that revolve around killing people?"
Why would this be anybody's business other than the parents? The ratings are meant to be a guideline to inform the parents of the type of content the game has, nothing more. They make the decision of whether or not to allow the child to play the game.
I was raised in an environment sans censorship of any kind. The only side-effect involved some sleepless nights as a seven year-old after having watched horror movies. I learned not to see horror movies again for a while after (but wasn't prohibited from doing so). I don't have a problem with parents who do decide to shield their children from certain things, but the decision is theirs, not yours.
films are also dreams, and who is to say what message the audience will find in the safe?
I think your interpretation of the movie proves that point. I think that many of the things you've mentioned were not in the film for the reasons you state, but you've glued them together in a coherent form.
That's not a bad thing. Art isn't about the intent of the artist, it's about what the audience get out of it. Even if I disagree with aspects of your interpretation, I found it extremely interesting. I do have a singular problem with it:
People who argue about the spinning top for instance miss the point. The ending of the film is a heaven sequence depicting Cobb’s reunion with God. We have the forgiveness of sins (immigration), the family reunion and the return to the heavenly garden. In order to get there Cobb simply needs to forgive himself (for his complicity in his wife's death) and sacrifice his own life to rescue Saito from limbo. The point of the spinning top is that Cobb ignores it -- he has faith.
Cobb didn't put the spinning top down and walk away. He looked at his family, he let them go on ahead of him, then he spun the object on the table and stared intently at it. When he was satisfied that it would stop spinning, as it slowed down for a bit, that's when he walked away to join his family.
Here's the catch: he didn't actually wait for it to stop spinning completely. A small amount of hope was sufficient. It's less about faith and more about knowing that he could be happy there, whether it's real or not. Once he had enough room to accept the possibility that it was real, he didn't want to ruin it by finding out it's not. Ignorance is bliss. This really was the problem his wife had all along...she suspected the world she was living in wasn't real, but who cares? She was living a good life with someone she loved and he loved her back. Why even try to wake up from that?
Tell that to the person who witnesses a rifle bullet hitting a tree, shot from a mile away.
I can tell you for certain the trigger was not pulled at the instant the person witnessed the bullet hit the tree.
The same is true on a cosmic scale.
No, it's really not the same on a cosmic scale. The difference being the speed of the bullet is not the speed-limit of all information communication in the universe. The shooter can get updated information on the target faster than the bullet can reach you. There is absolutely no way you can get updated information on a star before its light reaches you. There's absolutely nothing about the star that can possibly affect you in any way whatsoever before its light reaches you.
We can't measure things until the information reaches us, so that is when it happens.
I think you are misunderstanding relativity, or perhaps just miscommunicating it.
Example: Some cosmic microwave background radiation from the early universe is just reaching Earth today. That doesn't mean that the universe is young "now".
My understanding of relativity is that you can still use distance = speed * time to figure out when an event occurred in your reference frame. You just have to give up the notion that everyone else will agree with you.
You misunderstand the grand-parent. What he's saying is that it's senseless to say that Betelgeuse has blown up hundreds of years ago if all the effects from the event can only be felt now. Its light will only reach us now, any (extremely small, imperceptible) gravitational effects would only happen now...if somebody who was closer to the event, and thus noticed it "sooner" tried to warn you about it...you'd only get the message after you've already seen the event yourself.
For all intents and purposes, you may as well treat the event as having happened the moment you've witnessed it.
Slashdot Mirror
Except it was a product, it was a license. A revokable license. I'm pretty sure this is an exact example of why the GPL and copyleft is so important.
At the very least it's an example of the evils of DRM. This is why legitimate customers should be wary of software that needs to phone home to work. It places you at the mercy of the company in question. Meanwhile the pirates don't have to deal with these problems.
If you don't wish to associate with dicks, you avoid them right?
Well, EA decided they didn't want to associate with this dick anymore.
That's fine and dandy, but that's not all they did. If I sell a product to someone, and then decide that that someone is a dick, I can't demand that he can no longer use the product I sold him. It's even more wrong to do that without giving that person a refund.
This isn't about banishing him from the forum and the store. It's their forum and their store, it's hard to argue against that. The problem is that the consequences of banning him from the forum and the store was the inability to use a product he gave EA money for.
I own over 200 games on Steam. I can play any one of them anytime. I have purchased well over 1000 games over the course of my life - except I can't find majority of them, the rest have scratched up disks, lost CDkeys, lost manuals and hard to find patches.
I'll grant you that having an automatic remote backup over everything you have is nice, but that's not an advantage over physical media. That's an advantage to having backups. Of course, thanks to all the pirates who use the term "backup" to mean "pirate" that word is made fun of by people who use it seriously, but your example is an example of why people like me have always done real, actual, backups. Where is every game I've ever bought? Attic. That said, their images are easily accessible on my network drive, along with a folder for each game that contains the patches, executables, and nocd patches for games with DRM. I don't pirate shit, but I do make legitimate backups, and that's why.
Now you're going to say, "that's a lot of work. I didn't have to do anything, and I have my remote backup." You're right. Of course, when steam starts supporting some of your games and you can no longer download them, I'll point out that I still have access to my stuff, because I control the backup. Before you say, "they'll never do that," I'll say that I used to believe you. I have a ps3, and I bought a bunch of games from psn, which had similar terms as to the ones you describe. Then the latest terms of service mentioned that they're allowed to remove games from the network at any time, and if you don't have them in your ps3 for any reason, tough. You don't get your money back. Now, Valve isn't Sony, but what guarantee do you have that they won't update the terms of service to something that screws you in the future? With the physical media and my own personal backup, I'm 100% guaranteed to always have a working copy.
>> Being a dick says a lot about your character, but other than alienating yourself from people who don't want to be around dicks, it really should carry no consequences whatsoever. (emphasis mine)
Oh gawd, not again. In Spanish we have a saying that, roughly translated, means "If my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a bicycle."
The intended meaning is that, it doesn't matter how much you wish for something to be true, or how much you think it should be so, the real world has a tendency of existing without fulfilling your expectations.
I'm sure some people think that performing any action should also come with no consequences whatsoever, or that everything should be free for anybody to take. However, that's not how the real world works, at least not the civilized world.
-dZ.
I'm not sure I understand what point you're trying to make here. That there's a difference between something that "should happen" and "does happen"? I know that, and I chose the word "should" for a reason. That the real world doesn't behave like it "should"? I know that too, but the proper response to it isn't to ignore unfair events, it's to try to change the world. You're never going to reach perfection, but aiming for it is the only way to get closer.
Maybe your point is that people believe unreasonable things, and that there should be more dire consequences to being a dick in a forum? I'm willing to entertain that, but you you haven't offered any arguments to support that particular position. As for harsh consequences in a "civilized world" the real question you need to answer is, "should the consequences for being a dick in a forum involve blocking access to something you have paid money for?" Because I don't think it works that way in the civilized world.
Well, good. Dicks need a solid pounding from time to time, to remind them that throwing down has consequences online as well as in meatspace.
Being a dick says a lot about your character, but other than alienating yourself from people who don't want to be around dicks, it really should carry no consequences whatsoever. Hell, I think your comment is quite dickish, but I don't think you should be banned from posting to slashdot because of it, much less banned from using all the other Geeknet sites, like sourceforge. However, such a drastic move would be analogous to what happened to this particular guy.
The notification system I just have never gotten used to. Why must I be notified of new IM's by seeing the IM text, but when I go to try to get rid of it, it fades out.
I believe that settings for everything should exist so that you can set things up to your personal liking. That said, for the notification behavior that they've set as default, you're not supposed to try to get rid of it. You're supposed to look at it, read the text message, and ignore it until it fades, while keeping doing your thing. Unless you want to reply, but the point of the notification isn't to help you reply, it's to help you decide whether you want to stop what you're doing and actually reply.
I like it a lot. That said, I completely see your point in that you want it to do something else, and there should be an easy way that you could change the behavior so that it does what you want it to do.
If you take an android device with google voice installed. Tell it use google voice for all calls. The get an Xlink device (http://www.myxlink.com/index.aspx). Peer the XLink to your android device via bluetooth. Now you have analog dial tone coming out of the XLink and you can put it into a PBX or regular analog phones.
Dude, the entire point is not needing to have a phone other than the google voice number.
Things like confidence in special teams and relative tiredness aren't really that predictive.
I suppose it matters whether we're talking college football or NFL, there. Being a gamecock, I definitely know that "confidence in special teams" is very predictive. Sometimes you have a team where your special team sucks. Sometimes you have a kicker that can't reliably kick extra points, let alone long field goals. Go for fourth down more often there. Other times you have a kicker that can reliably kick 50-yard field goals. Go for those more often when that's the case. Relative tiredness can also make a pretty big difference in college football. I honestly know NOTHING about the pros, I don't watch them. I can see how it would matter less among them, though.
If you build a model (pretty much no matter how you build it) and compare it to what coaches actually do, you'll find that in general, coaches don't go for it on fourth down nearly as often as they should...And it wouldn't be hard for them to do a lot better than they do. Saying that there are a lot of variables is just their weak excuse for not believing in the math.
I'll take your word for it, but I think you misinterpreted me (or I wasn't clear enough). The point of my post is that humans are notoriously bad at judging probabilities when there are a lot of variables. They give more importance to some things over others when there's no reason to do so. Emotions get in the way. Sometimes you're pumped up, and you're going to be more aggressive than you should. Other times you've been beaten, your morale is low, and you're going to be way more cautious than you should. That's what I meant with, "consequently, that's also why they think a computer would be good at making these decisions." You can place your model in there, and give it all the variables. It's likely to do a better job. It's not as simple as, "go for it on fourth more often," but I very much agree that it's possible that a model that does a better job computing these probabilities would end up being more aggressive. It seems you've done some research there, and that's the case. I haven't, so I'll take your word for it.
If a play increases that probability on average, it's the correct play no matter how risky it is.
True, but going for it on fourth down doesn't always increase that probability on average. If you fail, you give the opposing team good ball position which increases their chance of scoring. If you're behind, they increase their lead, if you're ahead you decrease your lead. If you're in a position where the field advantage to the opposing team isn't very high, then you're probably also in a position where you can score a field goal.
The entire point is trying to determine whether going for it increases or decreases your chances of winning the game. There are many variables involved. What's the position in the field? What's the score? How much time do you have left? What's your confidence level in your special teams, defense, and offense? How tired is your defense relative to your offense, how much time have they spent on the field? Based on how your offense has been playing against this particular defense, how likely is it that you're going to get the yards you need?
Consequently, that's also why they think a computer would be good at making these decisions :)
How is this different from having an agent sit in a car across the street and follow the car whenever it moves? Are FBI agents not allowed to make use of technology to make their jobs more efficient?
It's different in that when they're following you around, they didn't have to plant a device in your property.
Interesting/informative isn't the defining characteristic of an encyclopedia, though. I mean, my PhD thesis is interesting, but it's not going up there. Encyclopedias are about a different kind of content, specifically a review of a subject. They've at least reached a useful metric for suitability with the guideline that articles should have proper secondary sources. That, IMO, should be the sole criterion - "can you write a properly referenced review of this subject?".
I agree with you. And I would have absolutely no problem with the conclusions from your Ph.D thesis being placed in the relevant entry for the topic your thesis deals with. Then your thesis would be cited as a reference.
The problem is that the deletionists are trying to put limits on the subject matter. I don't give a shit whether the topic of your dissertation is in Quantum Theory or Buffy Studies, as long as it follows your criteria of "properly referenced review of the subject." They want to be able to say, "this topic isn't important enough to be part of the encyclopedia," and they have no reason for doing that. It's not like they have some sort of space limit. Subject importance is relative. If I'm searching for it, it's important to me.
Quantum Entanglement.
Slashdot featured a related story a few weeks back: Research Finds That Electric Fields Help Neurons Fire.
How is "research finds that electric fields help neurons fire" related to quantum entanglement? You don't need quantum mechanics to describe electromagnetic fields. Maxwell came up with his equations long before there was such a thing as quantum theory.
All matter is subject to quantum field effects. Human bodies are composed of matter. Is it really such a stretch to wonder if humans really do experience entanglement all the time, such as when you think about someone just before they do call?
Yes. Yes it is.
Erm, how did you know it wasn't doing what it was supposed to do if you didn't first know what it was supposed to do?
You know what the overarching program is supposed to do, and it's not doing it, so you look at the code. You don't know which part of the code is doing what and what approach is being used to accomplish the task until you look at it. You don't know what the original coder meant to do with that individual section of code unless he has commented it (or you managed to figure it out, but if the code is wrong in the first place, you might have problems doing that).
That's just a standard acronym, not a backronym. Backronyms use the acronym as a word in the full phrase. For example: WINE: WINE Is Not an Emulator.
No. Backronyms are acronyms where the phrase was created such that it fits whatever the acronym they desired happened to be, instead of actually appropriately naming something and then figuring out what the acronym is.
What you're thinking of is a recursive acronym. You can also have recursive backronyms.
Funny how we go to extremes to prevent individuals from accessing our email, but have no problem with the same email being read by Google (either systematically for targeted ads or from a government subpena).
If it's really that sensitive, encrypt it.
As I've mentioned to another poster, encryption protects the contents of your message, but not the identity of your contacts. Finding out e-mail addresses of other people you're communicating with gives them other accounts to try to perform surveillance on.
seems like that's what gnupg is for.
gnupg prevents someone from reading the e-mail, but if they get access to your account, gnupg won't help prevent people from figuring out who you're communicating with. The headers are still in the clear, they have to be.
While I have to applaud Google for trying to keep their users' accounts safe, I have to say that this idea is really untenable. Not everyone has a cellphone, not everyone with a phone carries it all of the time, and you might not always have reception. Just this last summer, I had a month-long internship in Nebraska. The town I stayed at had zero reception on Sprint's network and the nearest cell tower was over an hour away. So, for the entire month, I was without a phone. And last February, I was in Switzerland, where again, I had no cell service.
Furthermore, if my bank can authenticate me without requiring an SMS, then certainly my email provider can do the same.
This isn't meant for the average joe. It's meant for people with sensitive e-mails. If you think a totalitarian government might be going after you because you're part of a human rights organization, then signing up for two-factor authentication is for you. If your e-mail is basically your friends sending you stupid chain e-mails, then it's not. After all, I do have my cell phone with me all the time, and I don't ever want the inconvenience of two-factor authentication precisely because I carry my cell phone with me all the time: I never go to the gmail web page, I use imap and check my mail with my phone's client (or rather, my phone's client tells me when I have mail).
the american president is not going to cut off the internet and start goose stepping around the white house. this ranks right up there with other paranoid schizophrenic fantasies like rednecks with guns in the woods are going to save us from fascism. please stop mentioning the american internet kill switch in the same sentence as egypt, china, or iran. its just... dumb
we live in an abused, yes, compromised, yes, but still functioning democracy. meaning rule is by consent, not force and fear...
Goddamnit, dude. Way to miss the point. Nobody, and I mean absolutely nobody, is saying the US is as bad as Egypt or China. What we do say when we compare the proposal for the kill switch in the US with what happened in Egypt is that we don't want to move in that direction. It's not that we fear tomorrow the President is going to go dictator on us...it's that we don't want to make it any easier for this to one day happen, even 200 or 400 years from now.
but fear is not how it works in the usa. really, mr. snarky teenager. do you feel afraid criticizing the us government on slashdot? oh, why not? maybe because you have that right AND THAT RIGHT IS RESPECTED.
Exactly. So now is the time to use those rights. You're not supposed to wait until we become a dictatorship to start criticizing your government when it moves in a direction of increased government power. By that point it's far too late, and it's very difficult to turn back. You have those rights now for a reason, and maintaining vigilance is the fucking reason. Stop saying, "we're not as bad as China." That's not something to be proud of. We know we're not as bad as China, but the bar isn't set that low. Once we can point to anything at all in our government that is remotely similar to what governments with less freedoms are doing it's time to stop and think about the direction we're moving in.
its effect on me is irrelevant.
When you're talking about what it is that you're going to see in the sky, it is the only thing that is relevant.
One of the most interesting things you can explain to someone who doesn't understand cosmological scale is that the further away a light source is, the further back in time you're looking. Ignoring this fact and playing make-believe with your data because its convenient eventually causes errors in assumptions on a larger scale.
Nobody's "playing make-believe" with the data. It's simply about choosing what's important for the case at hand. Being pedantic about saying, "the star isn't going to go nova soon, it has in fact already gone nova long ago" is about as stupid as calculating the kinetic energy of a car traveling at 60 mph using the equations of relativity. Newton's equations are "incorrect", but goddamnit, for the case you're studying the difference doesn't matter.
In this case, if we do it your way and you tell me that Betelgeuse has probably gone nova about 600 years ago, that's not enough information. I'm going to have to ask you, "how far away is Betelgeuse?" in order to figure out if we have historic records of it going nova that I can look up, or if it's going to happen soon in the future, or if it's not going to happen anytime in my lifetime. If we do it my away and say, "SN 393" went nova in 393 AD you've given me the information I actually care about, and can look up the record of Chinese astronomers recording the star that suddenly appeared. In fact, that's why actual astronomers, as in the people who actually study these things for a living, treat it this way, and it's why the supernova SN 393 is fucking called SN 393. SN for supernova, 393 for when the event was observable on Earth.
Why would this be anybody's business other than the parents?
And why is any of this anyone's business other than the parents? The kid cheated. The company provided proof to the parents. Case closed. The proof, the parents response or the scenarios in question are none of your business either.
No argument with that, you're right. However, the cheating problem not being anybody's business doesn't suddenly make the "kid is too young to be playing violent video games" everybody's business. The reporter should be saying, "not interested in the story," he shouldn't be finding more irrelevant questions to ask.
For the reporter to ask: "What's your autistic 11 year old doing spending all his time playing Mature rated games that revolve around killing people?"
Why would this be anybody's business other than the parents? The ratings are meant to be a guideline to inform the parents of the type of content the game has, nothing more. They make the decision of whether or not to allow the child to play the game.
I was raised in an environment sans censorship of any kind. The only side-effect involved some sleepless nights as a seven year-old after having watched horror movies. I learned not to see horror movies again for a while after (but wasn't prohibited from doing so). I don't have a problem with parents who do decide to shield their children from certain things, but the decision is theirs, not yours.
films are also dreams, and who is to say what message the audience will find in the safe?
I think your interpretation of the movie proves that point. I think that many of the things you've mentioned were not in the film for the reasons you state, but you've glued them together in a coherent form.
That's not a bad thing. Art isn't about the intent of the artist, it's about what the audience get out of it. Even if I disagree with aspects of your interpretation, I found it extremely interesting. I do have a singular problem with it:
People who argue about the spinning top for instance miss the point. The ending of the film is a heaven sequence depicting Cobb’s reunion with God. We have the forgiveness of sins (immigration), the family reunion and the return to the heavenly garden. In order to get there Cobb simply needs to forgive himself (for his complicity in his wife's death) and sacrifice his own life to rescue Saito from limbo. The point of the spinning top is that Cobb ignores it -- he has faith.
Cobb didn't put the spinning top down and walk away. He looked at his family, he let them go on ahead of him, then he spun the object on the table and stared intently at it. When he was satisfied that it would stop spinning, as it slowed down for a bit, that's when he walked away to join his family.
Here's the catch: he didn't actually wait for it to stop spinning completely. A small amount of hope was sufficient. It's less about faith and more about knowing that he could be happy there, whether it's real or not. Once he had enough room to accept the possibility that it was real, he didn't want to ruin it by finding out it's not. Ignorance is bliss. This really was the problem his wife had all along...she suspected the world she was living in wasn't real, but who cares? She was living a good life with someone she loved and he loved her back. Why even try to wake up from that?
Tell that to the person who witnesses a rifle bullet hitting a tree, shot from a mile away.
I can tell you for certain the trigger was not pulled at the instant the person witnessed the bullet hit the tree.
The same is true on a cosmic scale.
No, it's really not the same on a cosmic scale. The difference being the speed of the bullet is not the speed-limit of all information communication in the universe. The shooter can get updated information on the target faster than the bullet can reach you. There is absolutely no way you can get updated information on a star before its light reaches you. There's absolutely nothing about the star that can possibly affect you in any way whatsoever before its light reaches you.
The Chinese Intelligence Agency?
You fucked that up. "Chinese Intelligence in America" was the Simpsons joke.
We can't measure things until the information reaches us, so that is when it happens.
I think you are misunderstanding relativity, or perhaps just miscommunicating it.
Example: Some cosmic microwave background radiation from the early universe is just reaching Earth today. That doesn't mean that the universe is young "now".
My understanding of relativity is that you can still use distance = speed * time to figure out when an event occurred in your reference frame. You just have to give up the notion that everyone else will agree with you.
You misunderstand the grand-parent. What he's saying is that it's senseless to say that Betelgeuse has blown up hundreds of years ago if all the effects from the event can only be felt now. Its light will only reach us now, any (extremely small, imperceptible) gravitational effects would only happen now...if somebody who was closer to the event, and thus noticed it "sooner" tried to warn you about it...you'd only get the message after you've already seen the event yourself.
For all intents and purposes, you may as well treat the event as having happened the moment you've witnessed it.