It is an attractive idea that if criminals see people have guns they will be deterred and stop attacking them. However it is a fact that the one big western country where guns are allowed is also the one with the worst (and by far) gun related crime rate. So maybe what happens in fact is an escalation because criminals still are there and will prepare themselves to facing an armed victim. Your idea is very nice and I would love it if it worked; but reality contradicts it so maybe it does not work in practice.
Your second remark stems from a misunderstanding I think. I just wanted to mention that if in a society the individuals think "my money is more important than a criminal's life" then a lot of deaths should be expected in this society. Either by criminals killing victims, or by victims killing criminals. In some countries a victim killing a criminal can become a criminal too. Now I'm not discussing the validity of that idea but its effect: those countries have less gun related problems than the USA do, so maybe there's something to learn here.
Banning guns isn't the solution for several reasons, the most salient being that criminals will still have guns from any source willing to sell them, while their victims will not.
I find it hard to follow this line of thinking. Are you talking about the cases where armed criminals attack innocent victims? If so, how often does the fact that the innocent victim also owns a gun allow a happy ending? From my naive perspective (never been to the usa, so it really is naive, and I'm eager to get a better informed perspective), I would rather imagine that criminals kill each other, and that in the event of a criminal attacking an innocent victim, not having a weapon allows for a more peaceful resolution. Case A: criminal has a gun, victim doesn't, victim gives money, nobody is hurt. Case B: both have guns, someone dies. Of course if you think that a criminal dying is a better resolution than a victim giving away money then your position makes sense. But thinking that way might also be a reason for the high number of crimes committed with handguns that you mention.
As a French I agree "neesh" sounds closer to the original french word. We don't really make a distinction between short and long vowels (to my knowledge at least), so probably something between "nish" and "neesh" is the way we frog eaters pronounce it. Also, we don't move our mouth in the middle of a vowel (it would crush the shell of the snail that we constantly keep in our mouth) so I'd say it's just the same frequency all along the vowel's short life.
It does show a cycle, agreed, but by "playing images repeatedly" (see text in the first seconds). Any sequence of images will show a cycle if you play it repeatedly.
It was much worse in the Wategate days. You could tell Nixon was a meglomaniac who might start a nuclear war or conduct a coup d'etat to stay in power.
Congress pretty much rallied together to rid the country of this madman.
This sounds a lot like the Nixon depicted in Futurama - apparently the caricature is closer to the original than I thought. Funny how clueless one can be about recent history. Clearly not being a U.S. citizen and not being born at that time doesn't help, but still, it's recent history...
Frankly, waging war in explicit denial of the parliament would be grounds for immediate impeachment in pretty much any other country. How does that normally work in US?
Actually, not in France. The parliament is required to declare war, but as mentioned above, you can have military operations without naming it war. For instance the current "operations" in Lybia were decided by the government (which means by Sarkozy in practice). They were debated at the parliament but without a vote. I don't really see the point of such a debate if it's not followed by a vote. In that example a large majority was supporting the intervention, but it was not always the case. For instance I don't think that the French presence in Tchad was ever discussed at the parliament.
Not to mention the Nobel Peace Prize - a brilliant lawyer indeed! If it can make US citizens feel any better, people outside of your country also believed he would end the wars. You even find some people to say that he's not disappointing, just doing what he can with a difficult context...
Also, is it impossible to imagine that the mentioned terrorist acts (9/11) came as response to other previous actions by USA and their allies? (e.g. that embargo, supporting Israel aggressive colonial behavior, etc)
By the way, the effort in China to produce a lot of papers does not only consist in submitting a lot of papers. There is also an increasing number of new Chinese journals, some of them of questionable reviewing process. I recently had to review a paper for "The journal of xxxxxx University". Such journals are highly questionable. For instance, will scientists from xxxxxx university be subject to the same reviewing process as other people? I initially wanted to refuse but finally accepted to review it, for various reasons including curiosity about how strict or complacent the editor can be. I must also add that when submitting the review I was asked to enter my address so that they can send me a gift. I did not fill it and received a gift nonetheless. In the end it really feels like they try to buy referee reports so that some research output can be increased.
The people you contradict are saying that because of money-related incentives and greed the iPad is not as nice a product as they would like it to be. Your answer to them is that Apple is right to do what they do because they make a lot of money this way.
Addition to your answer to 1.: of course C: is much better than/dev/sda... On the mac it's/dev/disk0s2, which can be seen as a bit more intuitive but not much and well the non-expert user never sees it anyway.
and i will bet you a GNP that every other country has the same problem
I don't know about every other country. I know about France though: after ~11 year old kids go to what is called "Collège". Don't let the name mislead you, it's similar to part of what you'd call high school. There they get specialized teachers, one per topic. So for instance biology is taught by people who studied biology. I thought it was the same in every other country:)
The way I see it a "real programming language" is a Turing-complete programming language, which Lisp most certainly is. So I don't really see room for debate on Lisp being a real programming language - would also be interested in a URL to such debate though, maybe I can learn something.
You're absolutely right, they go to Guantanamo for that.
Also, are you claiming that lynching never took place in this tribe? It's funny how it seems to me that until the 60's it was happening, especially if your skin color wasn't the right one.
Well every tribe goes at its own pace, and the one we mention is one of the fastest so it is indeed frustrating to see the other tribes with less freedom of expression for instance. It doesn't mean this tribe is perfect though.
You might also want to cite Salman Rushdie, he's the perfect example.
Agreed, there are some hotheads who can have a terrible influence. However, burning the flag usually comes as an answer to something else such as "an embargo killing hundreds thousands" or "invading a country with fallacious pretexts", and other events that regularly feed a now long-lasting hate against occident in general and the U.S. especially. In the end, all those terrorists together still kill less people than our nice occidental countries. It's just that on one side it's called terrorism while on the other side it's called war. Both have virtuous motivations, within their own cultural codes, and both do terrible things to humankind as a whole. But hey if you really want to go factual and comparative, how about having a look at the 90's Iraq sanctions for instance? Can you balance a few hundreds thousands children dying over a few years with anything those hotheads did to us?
I agree with mostly all of that, and I don't think it contradicts my point. There has been slaughtering of Palestinians civilians and refugees by Israelis though, although no genocide (I guess it's a matter of scale).
Further discussing what you meant exactly by "removing from the map" is of no interest to me, and does not change the facts that (i) people in the region have been slaughtered by Israel and still are sporadically (last operations in Lebanon come to mind) and (ii) exodus of Palestinians has been taking place since the creation of Israel.
and sooner or later anyone who isn't a Jew but is American is going to agree, no matter how much the Jews spend on propaganda ( cough... NPR... cough ).
Well as it happens there are also many Jews who don't really like the idea of an Israel nation, so you probably meant "Zionists".
"Israel never removed a country's inhabitants from the map."
Right, before 1948, what we now call Israel was a land with nobody living in it. Oh and they also didn't slaughter anyone living there in order to create their artificial country. Not to mention anything in Lebanon (e.g. slaughtering refugees in Sabra and Shatila), or stealing water from all countries around, none of which can do anything because well Israel has nuclear power and they don't. Naturally they also don't continue to remove Palestinians from their land through aggressive and violent colonization.
Now it's fine to have strong opinions, but they should nonetheless be consistent with historical facts. What you say is not.
What you call a division symbol (÷) is not better than a forward slash. The only true division symbols I know of are those used when doing a division with a pen & paper, and you can't type those directly on your computer unless you use some special software like tex. Your so-called "division symbol" is just something that doesn't make any sense to me and I don't see how using a slash is worse.
What you call a multiplication symbol is the symbol for Cartesian product, which "multiplies" two sets; its result is a set of pairs. Using the cross to multiply two numbers is a nonsense to any mathematician, and I don't see how using an asterisk instead is worse: they are both convenient symbols to perform mathematical operations.
I totally agree, num pad should disappear. The fact: almost anything that can be done with a num pad can be done faster without a num pad (except with some stupid layouts e.g. French). Basically using the num pad involves to first move your hand 10+ centimeters (sorry non-metric folks) to the right, which usually already takes more time than typing the thing you want to type.
Slashdot Mirror
Right, because SOPA/PIPA is not about the US telling other sovereign nations what they can and cannot do.
It is an attractive idea that if criminals see people have guns they will be deterred and stop attacking them. However it is a fact that the one big western country where guns are allowed is also the one with the worst (and by far) gun related crime rate. So maybe what happens in fact is an escalation because criminals still are there and will prepare themselves to facing an armed victim. Your idea is very nice and I would love it if it worked; but reality contradicts it so maybe it does not work in practice.
Your second remark stems from a misunderstanding I think. I just wanted to mention that if in a society the individuals think "my money is more important than a criminal's life" then a lot of deaths should be expected in this society. Either by criminals killing victims, or by victims killing criminals. In some countries a victim killing a criminal can become a criminal too. Now I'm not discussing the validity of that idea but its effect: those countries have less gun related problems than the USA do, so maybe there's something to learn here.
Banning guns isn't the solution for several reasons, the most salient being that criminals will still have guns from any source willing to sell them, while their victims will not.
I find it hard to follow this line of thinking. Are you talking about the cases where armed criminals attack innocent victims? If so, how often does the fact that the innocent victim also owns a gun allow a happy ending?
From my naive perspective (never been to the usa, so it really is naive, and I'm eager to get a better informed perspective), I would rather imagine that criminals kill each other, and that in the event of a criminal attacking an innocent victim, not having a weapon allows for a more peaceful resolution. Case A: criminal has a gun, victim doesn't, victim gives money, nobody is hurt. Case B: both have guns, someone dies. Of course if you think that a criminal dying is a better resolution than a victim giving away money then your position makes sense. But thinking that way might also be a reason for the high number of crimes committed with handguns that you mention.
As a French I agree "neesh" sounds closer to the original french word. We don't really make a distinction between short and long vowels (to my knowledge at least), so probably something between "nish" and "neesh" is the way we frog eaters pronounce it. Also, we don't move our mouth in the middle of a vowel (it would crush the shell of the snail that we constantly keep in our mouth) so I'd say it's just the same frequency all along the vowel's short life.
It does show a cycle, agreed, but by "playing images repeatedly" (see text in the first seconds). Any sequence of images will show a cycle if you play it repeatedly.
It was much worse in the Wategate days. You could tell Nixon was a meglomaniac who might start a nuclear war or conduct a coup d'etat to stay in power.
Congress pretty much rallied together to rid the country of this madman.
This sounds a lot like the Nixon depicted in Futurama - apparently the caricature is closer to the original than I thought. Funny how clueless one can be about recent history. Clearly not being a U.S. citizen and not being born at that time doesn't help, but still, it's recent history...
Frankly, waging war in explicit denial of the parliament would be grounds for immediate impeachment in pretty much any other country. How does that normally work in US?
Actually, not in France. The parliament is required to declare war, but as mentioned above, you can have military operations without naming it war. For instance the current "operations" in Lybia were decided by the government (which means by Sarkozy in practice). They were debated at the parliament but without a vote. I don't really see the point of such a debate if it's not followed by a vote. In that example a large majority was supporting the intervention, but it was not always the case. For instance I don't think that the French presence in Tchad was ever discussed at the parliament.
Not to mention the Nobel Peace Prize - a brilliant lawyer indeed! If it can make US citizens feel any better, people outside of your country also believed he would end the wars. You even find some people to say that he's not disappointing, just doing what he can with a difficult context...
You can also add the deaths caused by the Iraq embargo in the 90's to this estimate: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_sanctions#Estimates_of_deaths_during_sanctions
Also, is it impossible to imagine that the mentioned terrorist acts (9/11) came as response to other previous actions by USA and their allies? (e.g. that embargo, supporting Israel aggressive colonial behavior, etc)
By the way, the effort in China to produce a lot of papers does not only consist in submitting a lot of papers. There is also an increasing number of new Chinese journals, some of them of questionable reviewing process. I recently had to review a paper for "The journal of xxxxxx University". Such journals are highly questionable. For instance, will scientists from xxxxxx university be subject to the same reviewing process as other people? I initially wanted to refuse but finally accepted to review it, for various reasons including curiosity about how strict or complacent the editor can be.
I must also add that when submitting the review I was asked to enter my address so that they can send me a gift. I did not fill it and received a gift nonetheless. In the end it really feels like they try to buy referee reports so that some research output can be increased.
The people you contradict are saying that because of money-related incentives and greed the iPad is not as nice a product as they would like it to be.
Your answer to them is that Apple is right to do what they do because they make a lot of money this way.
Now what is your point exactly?
Addition to your answer to 1.: of course C: is much better than /dev/sda... /dev/disk0s2, which can be seen as a bit more intuitive but not much and well the non-expert user never sees it anyway.
On the mac it's
and i will bet you a GNP that every other country has the same problem
I don't know about every other country. I know about France though: after ~11 year old kids go to what is called "Collège". Don't let the name mislead you, it's similar to part of what you'd call high school. There they get specialized teachers, one per topic. So for instance biology is taught by people who studied biology. I thought it was the same in every other country :)
The way I see it a "real programming language" is a Turing-complete programming language, which Lisp most certainly is. So I don't really see room for debate on Lisp being a real programming language - would also be interested in a URL to such debate though, maybe I can learn something.
Some people also claim that nobody was ever killed in the name of atheism...
You're absolutely right, they go to Guantanamo for that.
Also, are you claiming that lynching never took place in this tribe? It's funny how it seems to me that until the 60's it was happening, especially if your skin color wasn't the right one.
Well every tribe goes at its own pace, and the one we mention is one of the fastest so it is indeed frustrating to see the other tribes with less freedom of expression for instance. It doesn't mean this tribe is perfect though.
You might also want to cite Salman Rushdie, he's the perfect example.
Agreed, there are some hotheads who can have a terrible influence.
However, burning the flag usually comes as an answer to something else such as "an embargo killing hundreds thousands" or "invading a country with fallacious pretexts", and other events that regularly feed a now long-lasting hate against occident in general and the U.S. especially.
In the end, all those terrorists together still kill less people than our nice occidental countries. It's just that on one side it's called terrorism while on the other side it's called war. Both have virtuous motivations, within their own cultural codes, and both do terrible things to humankind as a whole. But hey if you really want to go factual and comparative, how about having a look at the 90's Iraq sanctions for instance? Can you balance a few hundreds thousands children dying over a few years with anything those hotheads did to us?
You can claim that ghosts are afraid of you, which in practice won't ever be falsified: they'll never show up in your presence.
I agree with mostly all of that, and I don't think it contradicts my point. There has been slaughtering of Palestinians civilians and refugees by Israelis though, although no genocide (I guess it's a matter of scale).
Further discussing what you meant exactly by "removing from the map" is of no interest to me, and does not change the facts that (i) people in the region have been slaughtered by Israel and still are sporadically (last operations in Lebanon come to mind) and (ii) exodus of Palestinians has been taking place since the creation of Israel.
and sooner or later ... NPR ... cough ).
anyone who isn't a Jew but is American is going to agree, no matter how
much the Jews spend on propaganda ( cough
Well as it happens there are also many Jews who don't really like the idea of an Israel nation, so you probably meant "Zionists".
So is your previous one about Arabs putting down weapons...
"Israel never removed a country's inhabitants from the map."
Right, before 1948, what we now call Israel was a land with nobody living in it. Oh and they also didn't slaughter anyone living there in order to create their artificial country. Not to mention anything in Lebanon (e.g. slaughtering refugees in Sabra and Shatila), or stealing water from all countries around, none of which can do anything because well Israel has nuclear power and they don't.
Naturally they also don't continue to remove Palestinians from their land through aggressive and violent colonization.
Now it's fine to have strong opinions, but they should nonetheless be consistent with historical facts. What you say is not.
What you call a division symbol (÷) is not better than a forward slash. The only true division symbols I know of are those used when doing a division with a pen & paper, and you can't type those directly on your computer unless you use some special software like tex.
Your so-called "division symbol" is just something that doesn't make any sense to me and I don't see how using a slash is worse.
What you call a multiplication symbol is the symbol for Cartesian product, which "multiplies" two sets; its result is a set of pairs. Using the cross to multiply two numbers is a nonsense to any mathematician, and I don't see how using an asterisk instead is worse: they are both convenient symbols to perform mathematical operations.
How is programming related to using the num pad?
I totally agree, num pad should disappear.
The fact: almost anything that can be done with a num pad can be done faster without a num pad (except with some stupid layouts e.g. French).
Basically using the num pad involves to first move your hand 10+ centimeters (sorry non-metric folks) to the right, which usually already takes more time than typing the thing you want to type.