That true, and also important. But needs amplification:
When The Sword and the Shield was written, the conflict between the two superpowers was perceived by most people as a struggle between ideologies: socialism versus the free market, utopianism versus pragmatism, etc. Not entirely true, but it gave Soviet operatives many opportunities to convince disaffected or idealistic people that they were the good guys.
Nowadays, the conflict between the surviving superpower and the heirs of the late USSR is mostly economic. It's one thing to ask people to risk everything for The Worker's Paradise, quite another to do it for a cadre of Russian billionaires.
The reason why Intel swept Suns floor was that x86 got competitive speedwise and then became faster and cheaper.
I absolutely agree. And so did top management at Sun, which why they spent billions trying to move into the x86 sphere. A move which failed, for reasons already covered in my previous post.
And guess what? Atom is fast and cheap too. Technically inferior to ARM, but then it's technically inferior to SPARC too.
You say "IANAL", but you don't seem to grasp what that implies. Law is a big, complicated, technical and subtle subject. I'm not saying it's beyond your ability to predict how a law court would apply the concept of assault to hate speech. But you need more than a simple string of logic that begins "Assault is...". A lot more.
My own casual knowledge suggests that no judge is going to treat hate speech as "assault" in a legal sense. You can prove me wrong simply by digging up the right example. Feel free to do so.
if you look at the raw numbers and general performance numbers also performance per watt numbers than you can see why no one really switches over from ARM to Intel in the non netbook space where Windows compatibility is a non issue.
I think the absence of an x86 operating system suitable for phones (even Windows Mobile is RISC-only) might also be a factor. Obviously Intel thinks so.
The architecture is garbage and the Risc core + interpreter on top of it just wastes cycles compared to a lean and clear instruction set ARM provides.
Ooh, Deja Vu. I used to work at Sun, and one big reason that company no longer exists: too many people there couldn't get past their loathing for the x86 architecture.
Hey, I hate it too. Probably more than most people, since back in the 80s, I tried to learn Windows programming and was partially stymied by all the weirdness of the segmented architecture back before it was hidden by 386 memory management. But I long ago learned to live with it. As they say in the military, quantity has a quality all its own, and you can't compete with the x86 architecture solely on the basis of technical superiority.
And it's not just about Windows compatibility. The x86 systems I worked on at Sun (and that the SPARCophile salespeople refused to push) mostly ran Linux. You think Steve Jobs cares about Windows compatibility? No, he cares about keeping costs down, and using Intel-based chipsets allows him to do that.
I used to assume that ARM would dominate the netbook market, for all the technical reasons you mention. When I decided to buy a netbook, I actually looked for an ARM one first. Couldn't find one worth the cost. Ended up with the aforementioned Atom netbook, and its battery life is everything promised for the ARM netbook. ARM may be theoretically better suited for low-power systems, but so far theory and practice are not the same.
Libel and slander laws only offer civil penalties. Perhaps assault laws apply (IANAL, and please don't pretend you're one either), but I've never heard of anybody actually being charged with assault based solely on their verbal actions.
Wrong context. I should have realized that most people would see the context as "Why pay for stuff you can get free online?" My context was "cable TV has gotten so outrageously expensive, sane people make do without it." Really, what you get for those hefty cable fees is the ability to watch stuff when it first comes out, without having to wait for the DVDs. I've been known to use pirated channels to get access to content that's still being sequestered. But even if bittorrent and sidereel went away tomorrow, I'd refuse to pay nearly $1K a year of early access charges.
What a terrible argument. 'Well, it wouldn't be as bad as North Korea, therefore I would roll over and accept it if it came up, because relatively it's ok I guess.'
That's no even close to what I'm saying. I've been known to make an effort now and then to fight censorship and support free speech. But the struggle for freedom has many battles, and I prefer to fight the ones that reallymatter. If you think your right to say racist things is more important than real restrictions on our freedoms, well then, go do something about it. But be mature enough to understand that somebody who doesn't share your priorities isn't a stooge of fascism.
I'd still rather live somewhere that has real free speech.
Which, apparently, you define as no laws of any kind on restricting what you can say. The only place that seems to fit is Somalia, which lacks any laws at all, or rather any government capable of enforcing them.
This has absolutely nothing to do with how much you pay for communications services. (And I agree, it's way too much, though why any sane person even has Cable TV any more is a mystery.) It's just a reallocation of wireless resources. It might actually help your bill a little, by creating some competition.
If you want to do something besides whine, start agitating for the breakup of the big media monopolies.
That's your standard for judging whether or not something infringes on civil liberties, whether or not it ends civilization?
Not at all what he's saying. There's obviously more infringement on speech rights in Canada (also on gun rights, which may have to do with their much lower murder rate), but the fact remains that Canadians suffer from less infringement on their rights than 80% of the world's population.
So you think freedom is either absolute or nonexistent? That's a childish POV, common among people who've never had to deal with real restrictions on freedom. You might consider moving to Burma or North Korea for a while to educate yourself on this issue. Or not — I understand they're both pretty dreary.
Personally, I'd grant you the right to say "I hate niggers" (your relatively innocuous example) or even "kill the niggers" (the much nastier example I used). But I'm not going to get bent out of shape if the law keeps you from saying it. And in any case I'd support your being penalized if somebody actually acts on your advice.
Despite what the NRA and Libertarians think, rights are never absolute. That's not because of the strawman liberal-fascists these guys dream up, it's because rights often conflict. In this case, your right to say whatever you want conflicts with other people's right not to be killed.
Did you notice her use of the word "regulation"? If so, you need get a dictionary, because it does not mean the same thing as "ban".
Not that I'm with Kagan on this issue. But then, I'm an extremist: I feel the same way about the 1st amendment that Charlton Heston felt about the 2nd. But I know I'm an extremist, and respect more nuanced opinions.
And no, banning kiddie porn and hate speech (which I don't put in quotes: some text, such as "kill the niggers" is clearly hate speech) is not the first step down a slippery slope. People tend to see slippery slopes in every trend they don't like. They're actually pretty rare.
Why is that? The current Brazilian Constitution (created in 1988) and several key laws give lots of rights to the accused ones.
So does the U.S. constitution, which is a bit older. You seem to have trouble grasping the concept that making something illegal does not necessarily prevent it from happening.
Four months without computer-to-computer communication that has become integral to the economy is far to long to be granted without oversight.
Forget 4 months. Our economy would be toast in a day or two. Most money transactions would be impossible. (Even paper checks are now processed electronically.) All those supply chains that are based on just-in-time ordering would go out of commission immediately. Supply chains that still use old warehouse models would survive a little longer, but when the warehouse is empty, how to you order more stuff?
I could add more items to the list, but that's gilding the lily. Any one item on the list would screw us over more thoroughly than the worst virus possibly could. "All-or-nothing" is crap.
But that only says that some heights give better results than others. I don't see anything to contradict my notion that a zero height is less effective than any positive height. And it makes sense (to me, anyway) since a ground burst dissipates half the energy into the ground. This 0.5 loss would drop as you moved the bomb away from the ground. The optimum height would be that where this improvement starts being offset by energy that dissipates before it reaches the ground.
(And recall that the Vatican bomb was underground when Tom Hanks found it, so ground absorption would be even higher.)
Now, it's true that if the bomb is high enough, none of the blast reaches the ground. But I seem to recall that they only had a few minutes to get it to a safe height. I lack the expertise to crunch the numbers, but I really find it hard to believe that you could get a bomb capable of destroying the Vatican to a safe height in that time. Come to think of it, I'm suddenly skeptical that a small helicopter could even fly that high. (Does some googling.) The flight ceiling for the best helicopters is 8,000 feet. Probably a lot less for the little one shown in the movie.
I was under the impression that an air burst does more damage, since the the shock wave propagates farther. Of course, I haven't exploded that many bombs...
Angels and Demons is also notable for the nastiest "don't try this at home" moment ever. Now boys and girls, if you ever stumble across an antimatter bomb that's about to go off, do not rush it to the nearest helicopter.
If refusing to consider ideas or facts that conflict with your preconceptions means you're terrified, than most people on Slashdot must be constantly wetting their pants!
Slashdot Mirror
You've got to be kidding me. Haven't these folks heard of PGP? Or are they just determined to act out a bad spy novel?
That true, and also important. But needs amplification:
When The Sword and the Shield was written, the conflict between the two superpowers was perceived by most people as a struggle between ideologies: socialism versus the free market, utopianism versus pragmatism, etc. Not entirely true, but it gave Soviet operatives many opportunities to convince disaffected or idealistic people that they were the good guys.
Nowadays, the conflict between the surviving superpower and the heirs of the late USSR is mostly economic. It's one thing to ask people to risk everything for The Worker's Paradise, quite another to do it for a cadre of Russian billionaires.
The reason why Intel swept Suns floor was that x86 got competitive speedwise and then became faster and cheaper.
I absolutely agree. And so did top management at Sun, which why they spent billions trying to move into the x86 sphere. A move which failed, for reasons already covered in my previous post.
And guess what? Atom is fast and cheap too. Technically inferior to ARM, but then it's technically inferior to SPARC too.
That is very presumptuous of you, and adds nothing to the discussion. I'm not trying to prove anyone wrong, or predict what a court would do.
When you claim that hate speech is legally a form of assault, that is exactly what you're doing.
You say "IANAL", but you don't seem to grasp what that implies. Law is a big, complicated, technical and subtle subject. I'm not saying it's beyond your ability to predict how a law court would apply the concept of assault to hate speech. But you need more than a simple string of logic that begins "Assault is...". A lot more.
My own casual knowledge suggests that no judge is going to treat hate speech as "assault" in a legal sense. You can prove me wrong simply by digging up the right example. Feel free to do so.
if you look at the raw numbers and general performance numbers also performance per watt numbers than you can see why no one really switches over from ARM to Intel in the non netbook space where Windows compatibility is a non issue.
I think the absence of an x86 operating system suitable for phones (even Windows Mobile is RISC-only) might also be a factor. Obviously Intel thinks so.
The architecture is garbage and the Risc core + interpreter on top of it just wastes cycles compared to a lean and clear instruction set ARM provides.
Ooh, Deja Vu. I used to work at Sun, and one big reason that company no longer exists: too many people there couldn't get past their loathing for the x86 architecture.
Hey, I hate it too. Probably more than most people, since back in the 80s, I tried to learn Windows programming and was partially stymied by all the weirdness of the segmented architecture back before it was hidden by 386 memory management. But I long ago learned to live with it. As they say in the military, quantity has a quality all its own, and you can't compete with the x86 architecture solely on the basis of technical superiority.
And it's not just about Windows compatibility. The x86 systems I worked on at Sun (and that the SPARCophile salespeople refused to push) mostly ran Linux. You think Steve Jobs cares about Windows compatibility? No, he cares about keeping costs down, and using Intel-based chipsets allows him to do that.
I used to assume that ARM would dominate the netbook market, for all the technical reasons you mention. When I decided to buy a netbook, I actually looked for an ARM one first. Couldn't find one worth the cost. Ended up with the aforementioned Atom netbook, and its battery life is everything promised for the ARM netbook. ARM may be theoretically better suited for low-power systems, but so far theory and practice are not the same.
Libel and slander laws only offer civil penalties. Perhaps assault laws apply (IANAL, and please don't pretend you're one either), but I've never heard of anybody actually being charged with assault based solely on their verbal actions.
Wrong context. I should have realized that most people would see the context as "Why pay for stuff you can get free online?" My context was "cable TV has gotten so outrageously expensive, sane people make do without it." Really, what you get for those hefty cable fees is the ability to watch stuff when it first comes out, without having to wait for the DVDs. I've been known to use pirated channels to get access to content that's still being sequestered. But even if bittorrent and sidereel went away tomorrow, I'd refuse to pay nearly $1K a year of early access charges.
What a terrible argument. 'Well, it wouldn't be as bad as North Korea, therefore I would roll over and accept it if it came up, because relatively it's ok I guess.'
That's no even close to what I'm saying. I've been known to make an effort now and then to fight censorship and support free speech. But the struggle for freedom has many battles, and I prefer to fight the ones that really matter. If you think your right to say racist things is more important than real restrictions on our freedoms, well then, go do something about it. But be mature enough to understand that somebody who doesn't share your priorities isn't a stooge of fascism.
I'd still rather live somewhere that has real free speech.
Which, apparently, you define as no laws of any kind on restricting what you can say. The only place that seems to fit is Somalia, which lacks any laws at all, or rather any government capable of enforcing them.
When are you leaving?
This has absolutely nothing to do with how much you pay for communications services. (And I agree, it's way too much, though why any sane person even has Cable TV any more is a mystery.) It's just a reallocation of wireless resources. It might actually help your bill a little, by creating some competition.
If you want to do something besides whine, start agitating for the breakup of the big media monopolies.
That's your standard for judging whether or not something infringes on civil liberties, whether or not it ends civilization?
Not at all what he's saying. There's obviously more infringement on speech rights in Canada (also on gun rights, which may have to do with their much lower murder rate), but the fact remains that Canadians suffer from less infringement on their rights than 80% of the world's population.
So you think freedom is either absolute or nonexistent? That's a childish POV, common among people who've never had to deal with real restrictions on freedom. You might consider moving to Burma or North Korea for a while to educate yourself on this issue. Or not — I understand they're both pretty dreary.
Personally, I'd grant you the right to say "I hate niggers" (your relatively innocuous example) or even "kill the niggers" (the much nastier example I used). But I'm not going to get bent out of shape if the law keeps you from saying it. And in any case I'd support your being penalized if somebody actually acts on your advice.
Despite what the NRA and Libertarians think, rights are never absolute. That's not because of the strawman liberal-fascists these guys dream up, it's because rights often conflict. In this case, your right to say whatever you want conflicts with other people's right not to be killed.
Did you notice her use of the word "regulation"? If so, you need get a dictionary, because it does not mean the same thing as "ban".
Not that I'm with Kagan on this issue. But then, I'm an extremist: I feel the same way about the 1st amendment that Charlton Heston felt about the 2nd. But I know I'm an extremist, and respect more nuanced opinions.
And no, banning kiddie porn and hate speech (which I don't put in quotes: some text, such as "kill the niggers" is clearly hate speech) is not the first step down a slippery slope. People tend to see slippery slopes in every trend they don't like. They're actually pretty rare.
Out here in California, we like our possum curry.
http://en.allexperts.com/q/Cooking-Meat-750/Exotic-dish-question.htm
Why is that? The current Brazilian Constitution (created in 1988) and several key laws give lots of rights to the accused ones.
So does the U.S. constitution, which is a bit older. You seem to have trouble grasping the concept that making something illegal does not necessarily prevent it from happening.
Learn to read. TPP didn't say it was legal. Read the text you yourself quoted.
Coerced evidence is illegal almost everywhere. And it ends up being used almost everywhere, because it's really hard to prove coercion.
Hello! Water. Electronics. They want to retrieve the data not destroy it.
Four months without computer-to-computer communication that has become integral to the economy is far to long to be granted without oversight.
Forget 4 months. Our economy would be toast in a day or two. Most money transactions would be impossible. (Even paper checks are now processed electronically.) All those supply chains that are based on just-in-time ordering would go out of commission immediately. Supply chains that still use old warehouse models would survive a little longer, but when the warehouse is empty, how to you order more stuff?
I could add more items to the list, but that's gilding the lily. Any one item on the list would screw us over more thoroughly than the worst virus possibly could. "All-or-nothing" is crap.
Thanks for spoiling my dinner!
But that only says that some heights give better results than others. I don't see anything to contradict my notion that a zero height is less effective than any positive height. And it makes sense (to me, anyway) since a ground burst dissipates half the energy into the ground. This 0.5 loss would drop as you moved the bomb away from the ground. The optimum height would be that where this improvement starts being offset by energy that dissipates before it reaches the ground.
(And recall that the Vatican bomb was underground when Tom Hanks found it, so ground absorption would be even higher.)
Now, it's true that if the bomb is high enough, none of the blast reaches the ground. But I seem to recall that they only had a few minutes to get it to a safe height. I lack the expertise to crunch the numbers, but I really find it hard to believe that you could get a bomb capable of destroying the Vatican to a safe height in that time. Come to think of it, I'm suddenly skeptical that a small helicopter could even fly that high. (Does some googling.) The flight ceiling for the best helicopters is 8,000 feet. Probably a lot less for the little one shown in the movie.
OK then, but I still don't care for the word "conspiracy". That implies a certain degree of secrecy.
I was under the impression that an air burst does more damage, since the the shock wave propagates farther. Of course, I haven't exploded that many bombs...
Angels and Demons is also notable for the nastiest "don't try this at home" moment ever. Now boys and girls, if you ever stumble across an antimatter bomb that's about to go off, do not rush it to the nearest helicopter.
If refusing to consider ideas or facts that conflict with your preconceptions means you're terrified, than most people on Slashdot must be constantly wetting their pants!