As for "hunting with drones," I also see a legitimate use case: scouting. Being able to establish migratory and feeding habits without having to hike through miles of wilderness and spend weeks camping along deer trails would be a real boon to those of us who like to hunt (for food), but work real jobs and thus do not have the time necessary to establish said patterns.
That is not a "legitimate use case". That is an excuse. If you have a real job they you are not hunting for food. You are hunting for amusement. If you are hunting for amusement then you do not need to scout out migratory patterns or feeding habits. Your survival does not depend on your efficiency as a hunter. If you want to go out and hunt then fine but there is no requirement that you actually bag an animal. You already have a rifle so I see no reason to give you additional advantages that you do not need.
Yea, namely that one is a method of food acquisition that requires training, certification, and licensing, and the other is a way for little kids (or people with little kid mentalities) to play up fantasies about murdering other humans.
"Food acquisition"? BULLSHIT. It's killing and terrorizing animals for fun. Nobody in the US needs to hunt to put food on the table. That argument is a load of crap.
No one actually dies when hunting either.
Exactly what do you call the dead animal that results from hunting? Oh, because a human didn't die it doesn't matter? Wow, you are a pretty cruel individual. The medical term for people who lack empathy like that is psychopathy.
We're talking about people getting amusement from the real world suffering of another creature.
Proof that you don't know jack about hunting , other than what [insert preferred 'envronmentalist' group] told you to think. FWIW, most hunters try to avoid causing the animals to suffer. That's why we invented target practice.
First you have no idea how much I know about hunting. (A lot actually as it turns out) Second, I know plenty about biology and it is a well documented biological fact that animals, just like humans, almost never die instantly or painlessly from gunshot wounds no matter how accurate the hunter is. Just because they fall down doesn't mean they are instantly dead nor does it mean they don't experience pain. Neither people nor animals usually die instantly from gunshot wounds and one shot insta-kills are pretty damn rare unless you are using enough firepower to vaporize the target. Any emergency room doctor can prove this to you. Any claims that hunting is somehow more humane than how livestock is killed when butchered is simply not supported by the facts.
I hope you can understand how unreasonably uninformed you are presenting yourself as.
Right, this from someone who can't understand biology, doesn't understand pointless cruelty to animals and can't see the difference between a video game fantasy and killing a real creature in the real world. And I'm the clueless one? Piss off troll.
As a comment addressed to the general population, worry about your own food, which was probably mistreated all the way to your plate, and not about the animal that the hunter did his damndest to drop with one shot.
Are you seriously going to pretend that that same hunter gets all their meat from hunting? No one does and you know it. Hunters don't hunt because they need the food or because it is more humane or because of population control. They hunt because it amuses them to kill something. Any other benefit that results is simply a second order effect. We spend over $20 billion per year on hunting so any argument that it is about food for the needy is preposterous.
That is how they justify it but very very few people in the US actually need to hunt to eat and we have food assistance programs that more than cover any of those who might. The claim that people "need" to hunt to eat is an absurd fiction in a country with the resources of the US. If they are actually reduced to the point where they have to hunt to eat in order to not starve then we should be deeply embarrassed as a nation because there is no need for that.
Actually, you might be surprised how much of the US population still hunts for food.
The answer is a very small percentage and close to none of them actually need to do it. We spend over $22 billion on hunting which could easily feed every person in the US that actually needs to hunt to put food on the table. Furthermore there are plenty of food assistance programs available to anyone in the US should they need the help. This argument that we have people that "need" to hunt for food is an absurd and false justification to whitewash the fact that most of them do it for their amusement and no other purpose.
Do you understand the appeal of first person shooters?
There is a HUGE difference between doing something imaginary in a video game and killing a real, live creature or a real live person. Do I really have to explain the difference to you? Here's a hint, in a video game no one actually dies and all the participants know that. It's one thing to fantasize about something and quite another to actually do it in the real world. We're talking about people getting amusement from the real world suffering of another creature. I hope you can actually understand why that is very very very different.
Aside from being done to control populations, it is also done as an activity people enjoy.
Most population control does not require the involvement of people hunting for amusement. That argument in most cases is simply a red herring. The vast majority of hunting in the US is simply done for amusement and any other goals it accomplishes are purely incidental.
Hunters already have plenty of advantage over their prey.
That's putting in mildly. Humans are ridiculously efficient killers.
This pervasive mentality (shooting wolves from a helicopter) and now this new drone thing is what gives hunters a bad name.
Damn right. Even a high powered rifle with no other technology is a ridiculously one sided advantage when hunting. There are several perfectly practical reasons to go hunting that have nothing to do with entertainment. (food, pests, protection, environment) They even have the gall to call hunting a "sport" and euphemise their bloodlust by calling their kills "harvesting" as if it was no different than planting corn. I'm not quite sure how it is a "sport" if the other team doesn't know they are playing.
I don't have a problem with allowing hunting for practical reasons but most hunters I know (and I know lots of them) are pretty disingenuous about their motives for killing harmless animals. 99% of the time it is for no purpose other then their own amusement. I find that sort of mentality rather disturbing.
Just because you call it game doesn't make it a sport. I really do not understand the appeal of killing animals for fun. To get a meal? Sure. To deal with a pest? Makes sense. To protect yourself? No problem even though it rarely happens. For environmental stewardship? Great. But just for fun? With high powered rifles and drones? That makes that person a sadistic asshole. We're already WAY too good at killing things. If you are out to kill things for "fun" then make it a level playing field and do it with nothing more than a knife.
Someone who would use a drone to hunt is like someone who plays a game with "god mode" enabled. They're completely missing the point. The point isn't to kill the animal at any cost. Someone who can afford a drone isn't doing it for their next meal. They're just killing to get their rocks off. Pity we aren't more evolved than that.
Is it news because the final Goxing finally came, and Slashdot editors have an agenda to keep bringing up articles on the smallest negative event happening to anyone somehow related to Bitcoin?
The agenda of the slashdot editors is simple. To attract readers and comments. Articles on bitcoin seem to accomplish that agenda.
Bitcoin by itself has no intrinsic value. It only has value because people decide it should.
No currency has "intrinsic value" and every asset only has value because people decide it should. Intrinsic value in finance refers to the value of something independent of its market value. Currency has no value independent of its market value and therefore by definition cannot have any intrinsic value. Doesn't matter if it is bitcoin, dollars or gold when used as a currency it cannot have intrinsic value.
The question I always like to ask about HFT is - If we ask ourselves what the economic function of exchange platforms is, what value does it add to the system?
That's a very good question for which all the answers are not yet clear. HFT does clearly provide some pressure in some cases to reduce bid-ask spreads which reduces costs for traders. It also may act to correct pricing inefficiencies more quickly which is demonstrably beneficial in some ways. In principle HFT is not doing anything that doesn't happen without it, albeit at a much slower rate. Arguably if it is fine slower the speeding things up should, in principle, not be a problem. In practice the jury is still out. Personally I think that HFT needs to be watched VERY carefully though I'm not optimistic this will happen until some disaster occurs. I don't see a problem with it in principle but there are some potential practical and fairness issues that worry me.
It seems to me that the fact that HFT is possible at all is a bug in the system. It is exploited by nefarious quasi-criminals, destabilising and creating distortions in one of the fundamental tools of our current economic system.
I think you are losing your objectivity here. You hint at some unspecified "nefarious quasi-criminals" but that's just FUD. There are practical arguments you can make against HFT but vague assertions of some criminal cabal engaged in unspecified activities to "distort" the economy is pointless scaremongering with little to back it up.
Most HFT is simply a sort-of clever attempt at arbitrage based on news or statistics. Nothing wrong with that in principle. That happens in pretty much every market even without HFT being involved. The relative speed of it in and of itself isn't objectively a problem. The question is whether the actions required to engage in HFT are causing practical or destabilizing problems for the marketplace. There is some evidence (such as flash crashes) that HFT might be introducing some new risks to the system which is certainly worthy of concern. There also are concerns that some parties are being given a privileged position in the market that they do not deserve since you or I as investors obviously cannot engage in HFT.
They are ACTING BEFORE Alice or Bob can which is why it is a TIME BASED man in the middle attack.
You are framing the issue in a way that isn't supported by the facts. What you are describing is EXACTLY the role a market maker plays. Market makers provide liquidity to the market by providing bid and ask (buy and sell) quotes and profiting on the difference between the two. Market makers are middle men who serve a useful role. There is nothing morally, practically or legally wrong with this. It is a practical action to create a liquid market. When it comes of market making HFTers who use market making strategies actually tend to reduce bid-ask spreads through competition which benefits Alice and Bob because both get better prices due to competition. It used to be that market making was provided by specialist firms but with HFT the role of specialist market makers is sometimes reduced.
There are some very real concerns regarding HFT but their (sometimes) role as a market maker isn't one of them unless we are talking about front running. Competition in market making demonstrably benefits buyers and seller by reducing spreads though competition. You WANT this to occur. Most high frequency trading has nothing whatsoever to do with market making and is really a form of statistical arbitrage based on news events and/or pricing models. They don't have or need privileged information the trade information and even if they do have such information so does everyone else engaged in HFT so any advantage they might have would be short lived and would benefit the traders at the end of the day anyway through reduced prices.
Short selling.. it is a scam especially 'naked' shots - where you bet on the price before you have the contracts in place.
Short selling is not a scam at all. In fact it is arguably very important to price discovery, providing a counterweight to excessive bullishness, ex-ante identification of asset bubbles and providing incentives to find fraud. Short selling in an of itself is just fine. That doesn't mean there aren't practical concerns that have to be addressed but the mere act of short selling certainly is not a scam.
Shorting is simply the act of selling something before you have bought it. Usually people buy something before they sell it but there is no fundamental reason it has to be done that way. In a short transaction you borrow the asset, sell it and then buy it back later and return it to the lender. The second order consequence of selling before you buy is that you tend to do it when you expect the price to fall because you want to sell high and buy low. Stock prices fall almost as often as they rise and there is no principled reason not to allow people to to bet on the directionality of stock prices. In fact when someone ends a long position, very often they are simply betting that the stock is going to fall. It's the same sale for the same reason, the only difference is that the buy occurred in the past instead of the future.
Now there are some practical issues that have to be addressed with short selling in order to have an orderly and reliable market. You are correct that an exchange whose procedures allow naked shorting to occur is asking for trouble because they can easily end up with a transaction that cannot be completed. It also opens a door to certain types of fraud. Naked short selling isn't illegal per-se because in some cases it isn't actually a problem but it's a type of transaction that tends to carry more risk than allowing it is worth.
Then you know nothing beyond what your prejudice limits you to.
I know "nothing"? Prove me wrong. Prove to me that religion is not about power and influence and money and tribalism. I've got a mountain of objective evidence that shows that religion is very much about those things so you've got a large task in front of you. Belief in a deity or proving the existence of one is a very separate issue from relgion.
Small minds aren't limited to theists. Gnostic atheists display small minded bigotry all the time, as you have just have.
Small minds rely on personal attacks rather than actual ideas based on observable evidence. I'm not the least bit ashamed to say that I think people who worship a deity through an organized religion are generally small minded, tribal, insecure, irrational and very often are being taken advantage of because that is what the evidence shows. If you can show me objective evidence of how they are not those things then I'll reconsider my position.
Personally, I'm agnostic, but unusual in that I am an agnostic theist. The Gnostic question (Can God's existence be proven?) and the Theist question (Does God exist?) are too often conflated by laypeople.
So you think god exists but know you can't prove it. There is no objective evidence to support your belief but it's fine as long as you understand it is irrational. So long as you keep those beliefs to yourself and don't try to force it on others then you and I have no quarrel. But you do realize that per your own argument on null versus 0 you are treating the theism question as true when in fact all the objective evidence is null or in some cases of specific religious claims, 0.
Furthermore you talk about the difference between theism and gnostism but ignore the fact that religion is a further separate issue. Religion is a social construct designed to create a powerful tribe based on theistic beliefs. You can believe in a god without being a member of a religion and without all the societal baggage and false stories that religions bring to the table.
But there are times when they are not - calls to destroy churches or make the propagation of beliefs illegal are just as onerous as any other call to set up a single state religion and just as illegal in the United States under the first amendment.
Who said anything about destroying churches or making propagation of beliefs illegal? I merely suggested a strong separation of church and state and strong education. We don't permit prayer in school because not everyone believes in prayer. We don't permit creationism in science class because creationism is not science and has no place there. If someone wants to believe in something irrational then they have every right to do so. That does not however mean they should have any right to push their irrational belief on to anyone else through the government or other coercive means. It also means that organizations formed around pushing irrational religious dogma on others (often at the point of a sword) are dangerous things that should be held at arms length by civilized society. If someone wants to quietly believe there is a god out there then there is no harm in that but that is demonstrably NOT what religions tend to do.
As far as how a deity fits into their picture, it is generally understood that the biblical stories are allegorical and not literal tellings of an event.
I don't think they see it as allegorical - at least not completely. If they are christian at some level they either believe that Jesus was the "son of god" or they do not. Jesus is not seen as allegorical. Whether the stories are literally true or not is irrelevant to the purpose of religion. If they do see Jesus as allegorical then there is little point in continuing to worship under that structure because then Jesus isn't real and there is no point in worshiping something that isn't real.
In general, religious belief does not hinge on anything that can ever be proven/disproven by observation, and is purely the domain of spiritual fulfilment and ideas that exist outside of the physical universe.
That is NOT how it works in the real world for most people. For most people there is some (varying) amount of overlap with the real world. Anyone who is rationally thinking about beliefs that cannot be proven cannot logically put any structure on them. You cannot say that there is a holy trinity or that god sent his son to earth and still claim that you are talking about anything outside the physical universe. You are putting structure on something you by definition cannot know anything about. At most you can logically say that there might be some sort of deity the nature of which we cannot ever know. The End. It's a very short and boring story though an intellectually honest one.
Broadly speaking: Religion (overall) attempts to subjectively answer 'why?'
Except they don't. Religion doesn't care about "why" at all. They make up some stories to tell people to achieve some social ends but they don't remotely actually address the question of "why". "Why" is a VERY difficult question. Richard Feynman said it better than I can. To answer the question of "why" you have to be in a framework that allows something to be true. Religion doesn't do this because religion is not concerned with truth - everything about religion is based on something that cannot be falsified. Saying some god did it is not any sort of answer to "why" anymore than your mother's justification when you were a child of "because I said so". They simply make up stoires until someone is satisfied and stops asking "why" but religion never actually answers any questions.
To my mind religion is fundamentally about power and money and influence. It doesn't answer any questions. It doesn't offer any real solutions. It certainly doesn't answer the question "why". At most it provides (false) assurance and thus comfort to some. It permits twisted and deluded people to gain positions of power over others based on nothing more than a lie due to their insecurities and mental limitations. Religion is like a virus of the mind to which we have built insufficient vaccines for.
The problem I think is small minds need a small God.
I'd modify that to say only small minds need a god at all. Saying there is a god if you think of the concept more broadly is simply variation of the claim that anything we don't understand must at some level be due to some deity. It's a god of the gaps argument more generalized. Maybe a useful tactic in the short run but I think ultimately self defeating.
Most scientists told him not to debate the creationists as it only brings more attention to them.
Debating them directly is probably pointless. Your debating someone about something that is fundamentally irrational. You're almost certainly not going to convince them of anything and anyone listening probably has already made up their mind on the topic. It's unclear what the point of such a debate might be. Maybe if there was something directly at stake like in the Scopes monkey trial it might be worthwhile.
No, the way to "debate" them needs to be through education, media and legislation. Strong separation of church and state. Strong scientific education. Television and media that makes the absurdity of blind faith clear and uncool. The more educated people are the less likely they are to believe in fairy tales. You aren't going to convert the faithful but you might be able to keep their children from being brainwashed.
Never forget however that in many places (including the US) the religious crazies outnumber the sane people. There are numerous states where atheists cannot legally hold public office. How this has passed constitutional muster eludes me.
Well it really happened and now the people he debated received enough money and even MUNICIPAL BONDS to build a life sized Ark.
Glad to see they put the money to productive use. I would consider that something of a dodged bullet.
That is true but in no case is Google getting paid by you. You are a COST to Google and that is how their relationship with you will show up on their financial statements. Google has to spend money on datacenters and programmers to get information from you that they can then use to sell advertising products to their customers for cash. To Google you are a vendor because the directionality of cash flow towards you is outward. I'm a certified accountant and I'm telling you how Google will see the nature of your relationship.
Now it is possible to be both a vendor and a customer of a company for different transactions. In my company we make wire harnesses. We have some customers who we also buy products from to sell to other customers. But you cannot simultaneously be both a customer and a vendor to the same entity at the same time.
If I go to a fair and buy a bunch of tokens that I then use to play some games, then the people that run the games turn those tokens in for cash - are they token sellers? They're game providers and the tokens are just a medium, similar to how I go to Google, to search and pay them with a bit of my screen space to show ads - Google then turns that screen space in for cash with advertisers.
The fact that you use a different form of currency doesn't change the nature of the financial relationship as far as Google is concerned. To Google, you are a vendor and you are most definitely NOT a customer unless you are paying them in cash money.
If you're looking at things from a pure "where do the USD come from?" point of view, then sure they're an advertising company - so are TV stations, newspapers, the sides of highways, buses, etc.
That is the perspective that matters here because it is Google's perspective. To Google you are a vendor because they (indirectly) pay you for a product that they then sell to others for cash. And you are correct, newspapers and TV stations ARE advertising companies because that is where the money comes from. Take away what brings in the money and the company will disappear.
So if I hire a piano teacher for my kids, and he agrees to accept payment in, say, fresh oranges instead of cash, he then becomes a customer even if I'm not selling those oranges to anybody else?
Don't be daft. Dealing with Google is not such a transaction. Getting your information and providing services to you is a cost to Google. They have to spend money to build services and technologies that they provide to you so the direction of cash flow to Google is outward. Technically it could be considered Cost of Goods Sold or more likely it would fall under SG&A. Google quite properly does not consider you their customer from an accounting perspective because you (probably) do not bring in cash to them. If you send money to someone (even indirectly) then they are a vendor. If you get money from someone then they are a customer.
Sorry, but that's not how it works.
I'm a certified accountant and I assure you that it very much IS how it works when you are talking about a for-profit company. The nature of your relationship to Google is that of a vendor from Google's perspective.
The form of payment is not what determines the relationship.
I didn't say the form of payment. I said the directionality of cash flow. HUGE difference.
If I was a vendor in this relationship, I would be the one setting the price.
How much control a vendor has over pricing depends on the product they are selling and who they are selling it to. If you are selling a commodity product like oranges then the vendor has little control over the price. If you are selling a customized proprietary product like an Oracle database then the vendor has a significant amount of control over the price. In this case you have limited control over the price because most of Google's costs are fixed. They have to pay for their datacenters and staff whether or not you are a customer and they have lots of other customers. You can elect not to provide them any information but that's about as far as it goes. Your information and attention is a commodity to google.
I'm a customer who pays with my information. Google then takes that information and offers it to advertisers
No you are NOT a customer. You are a vendor. You are "selling" your information to google (for services) who then sells it to advertisers. If you aren't paying cash to Google, you are not Google's customer. The maxim that "you aren't the customer, you are the product" isn't actually true because the product google offers is your attention and information about you. You are the vendor for that information. You "sell" to google and google sells to their customers.
It is possible to have more than one type of customer.
Very true but most of us are not customers of google. Who is a customer is ultimately dictated by the directionality of cash flow.
You are a customer when you use Google services. Google provides you a service, and in return you provide them some of your screen real estate.
If you do not pay Google with cash then you are NOT their customer. Google pays me through a form of barter for my personal information. That makes me a vendor. However I do not pay Google any cash and therefore I cannot be their customer. The saw that "you are the product not the customer" isn't quite true. Strictly speaking the product Google sells is the ability to communicate to/with me and I am the vendor of that product.
Google make its money mostly from advertising, but that's only they provide a good product to their customers that they are able to do that.
Their ability to deliver (your) eyeballs to their customers (paying advertisers) by providing you a useful service does not turn you into a customer. It makes you a vendor. You are "selling" your personal information to google in exchange for a useful service.
Movie theaters make most of their money from concessions, but they are not "pop-corn companies", the primary product is showing movies which enables them to sell their more profitable other product of popcorn.
Bad analogy. I still pay the movie theater for the seat. The fact that they make much of their profit off concessions doesn't change the nature of our relationship. However I would disagree that it does not make them a concessions company. You are what you make your money doing. Many gas stations are really convenience stores that use gasoline sales as a lure to bring in foot traffic. Movie theaters really are concession stands that use movies to lure in customers. Google really is an advertising company that uses free information search to lure in traffic. They are what people pay them for.
to be fair, they are not advertising to minors in any way in google apps, other than in branding.
They still are gathering valuable information from and about someone too young to legally enter into a contract. Google's business model for Google Apps is indirect. It also is a thrust at the vulnerable underbelly of Microsoft I use it in my work and they don't advertise to me directly either but I guarantee you that they are using that information to enable advertising somewhere else.
it's the browser plugin to automatically run arbitrary Java apps in websites that has a security flaw in its sandboxing.
That is one of the risks but not the only one. Plus the browser plugin comes bundled with other stuff so it's modestly annoying to try to separate that bit out from the rest.
Having Java installed isn't in itself a risk.
Of course it is a risk. Maybe not a huge risk but anything that allows arbitrary code to run on your computer is a risk. Even with security warnings it isn't hard to get people to run software they shouldn't.
The second is that LibreOffice does not require Java.
That depends very much on what you want to do with it. In my case I use the Base product which when I last checked still requires Java. There are some other features that won't work if Java is not installed. Yes you can get it working without Java but you cannot get everything working (yet) without it. In time I expect this will change.
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As for "hunting with drones," I also see a legitimate use case: scouting. Being able to establish migratory and feeding habits without having to hike through miles of wilderness and spend weeks camping along deer trails would be a real boon to those of us who like to hunt (for food), but work real jobs and thus do not have the time necessary to establish said patterns.
That is not a "legitimate use case". That is an excuse. If you have a real job they you are not hunting for food. You are hunting for amusement. If you are hunting for amusement then you do not need to scout out migratory patterns or feeding habits. Your survival does not depend on your efficiency as a hunter. If you want to go out and hunt then fine but there is no requirement that you actually bag an animal. You already have a rifle so I see no reason to give you additional advantages that you do not need.
I see the hunting supporters have some mod points to burn. Pathetic.
Yea, namely that one is a method of food acquisition that requires training, certification, and licensing, and the other is a way for little kids (or people with little kid mentalities) to play up fantasies about murdering other humans.
"Food acquisition"? BULLSHIT. It's killing and terrorizing animals for fun. Nobody in the US needs to hunt to put food on the table. That argument is a load of crap.
No one actually dies when hunting either.
Exactly what do you call the dead animal that results from hunting? Oh, because a human didn't die it doesn't matter? Wow, you are a pretty cruel individual. The medical term for people who lack empathy like that is psychopathy.
We're talking about people getting amusement from the real world suffering of another creature.
Proof that you don't know jack about hunting , other than what [insert preferred 'envronmentalist' group] told you to think. FWIW, most hunters try to avoid causing the animals to suffer. That's why we invented target practice.
First you have no idea how much I know about hunting. (A lot actually as it turns out) Second, I know plenty about biology and it is a well documented biological fact that animals, just like humans, almost never die instantly or painlessly from gunshot wounds no matter how accurate the hunter is. Just because they fall down doesn't mean they are instantly dead nor does it mean they don't experience pain. Neither people nor animals usually die instantly from gunshot wounds and one shot insta-kills are pretty damn rare unless you are using enough firepower to vaporize the target. Any emergency room doctor can prove this to you. Any claims that hunting is somehow more humane than how livestock is killed when butchered is simply not supported by the facts.
I hope you can understand how unreasonably uninformed you are presenting yourself as.
Right, this from someone who can't understand biology, doesn't understand pointless cruelty to animals and can't see the difference between a video game fantasy and killing a real creature in the real world. And I'm the clueless one? Piss off troll.
As a comment addressed to the general population, worry about your own food, which was probably mistreated all the way to your plate, and not about the animal that the hunter did his damndest to drop with one shot.
Are you seriously going to pretend that that same hunter gets all their meat from hunting? No one does and you know it. Hunters don't hunt because they need the food or because it is more humane or because of population control. They hunt because it amuses them to kill something. Any other benefit that results is simply a second order effect. We spend over $20 billion per year on hunting so any argument that it is about food for the needy is preposterous.
People also do it to eat.
That is how they justify it but very very few people in the US actually need to hunt to eat and we have food assistance programs that more than cover any of those who might. The claim that people "need" to hunt to eat is an absurd fiction in a country with the resources of the US. If they are actually reduced to the point where they have to hunt to eat in order to not starve then we should be deeply embarrassed as a nation because there is no need for that.
Actually, you might be surprised how much of the US population still hunts for food.
The answer is a very small percentage and close to none of them actually need to do it. We spend over $22 billion on hunting which could easily feed every person in the US that actually needs to hunt to put food on the table. Furthermore there are plenty of food assistance programs available to anyone in the US should they need the help. This argument that we have people that "need" to hunt for food is an absurd and false justification to whitewash the fact that most of them do it for their amusement and no other purpose.
Do you understand the appeal of first person shooters?
There is a HUGE difference between doing something imaginary in a video game and killing a real, live creature or a real live person. Do I really have to explain the difference to you? Here's a hint, in a video game no one actually dies and all the participants know that. It's one thing to fantasize about something and quite another to actually do it in the real world. We're talking about people getting amusement from the real world suffering of another creature. I hope you can actually understand why that is very very very different.
Aside from being done to control populations, it is also done as an activity people enjoy.
Most population control does not require the involvement of people hunting for amusement. That argument in most cases is simply a red herring. The vast majority of hunting in the US is simply done for amusement and any other goals it accomplishes are purely incidental.
Hunters already have plenty of advantage over their prey.
That's putting in mildly. Humans are ridiculously efficient killers.
This pervasive mentality (shooting wolves from a helicopter) and now this new drone thing is what gives hunters a bad name.
Damn right. Even a high powered rifle with no other technology is a ridiculously one sided advantage when hunting. There are several perfectly practical reasons to go hunting that have nothing to do with entertainment. (food, pests, protection, environment) They even have the gall to call hunting a "sport" and euphemise their bloodlust by calling their kills "harvesting" as if it was no different than planting corn. I'm not quite sure how it is a "sport" if the other team doesn't know they are playing.
I don't have a problem with allowing hunting for practical reasons but most hunters I know (and I know lots of them) are pretty disingenuous about their motives for killing harmless animals. 99% of the time it is for no purpose other then their own amusement. I find that sort of mentality rather disturbing.
Just because you call it game doesn't make it a sport. I really do not understand the appeal of killing animals for fun. To get a meal? Sure. To deal with a pest? Makes sense. To protect yourself? No problem even though it rarely happens. For environmental stewardship? Great. But just for fun? With high powered rifles and drones? That makes that person a sadistic asshole. We're already WAY too good at killing things. If you are out to kill things for "fun" then make it a level playing field and do it with nothing more than a knife.
Someone who would use a drone to hunt is like someone who plays a game with "god mode" enabled. They're completely missing the point. The point isn't to kill the animal at any cost. Someone who can afford a drone isn't doing it for their next meal. They're just killing to get their rocks off. Pity we aren't more evolved than that.
Is it news because the final Goxing finally came, and Slashdot editors have an agenda to keep bringing up articles on the smallest negative event happening to anyone somehow related to Bitcoin?
The agenda of the slashdot editors is simple. To attract readers and comments. Articles on bitcoin seem to accomplish that agenda.
Bitcoin by itself has no intrinsic value. It only has value because people decide it should.
No currency has "intrinsic value" and every asset only has value because people decide it should. Intrinsic value in finance refers to the value of something independent of its market value. Currency has no value independent of its market value and therefore by definition cannot have any intrinsic value. Doesn't matter if it is bitcoin, dollars or gold when used as a currency it cannot have intrinsic value.
The question I always like to ask about HFT is - If we ask ourselves what the economic function of exchange platforms is, what value does it add to the system?
That's a very good question for which all the answers are not yet clear. HFT does clearly provide some pressure in some cases to reduce bid-ask spreads which reduces costs for traders. It also may act to correct pricing inefficiencies more quickly which is demonstrably beneficial in some ways. In principle HFT is not doing anything that doesn't happen without it, albeit at a much slower rate. Arguably if it is fine slower the speeding things up should, in principle, not be a problem. In practice the jury is still out. Personally I think that HFT needs to be watched VERY carefully though I'm not optimistic this will happen until some disaster occurs. I don't see a problem with it in principle but there are some potential practical and fairness issues that worry me.
It seems to me that the fact that HFT is possible at all is a bug in the system. It is exploited by nefarious quasi-criminals, destabilising and creating distortions in one of the fundamental tools of our current economic system.
I think you are losing your objectivity here. You hint at some unspecified "nefarious quasi-criminals" but that's just FUD. There are practical arguments you can make against HFT but vague assertions of some criminal cabal engaged in unspecified activities to "distort" the economy is pointless scaremongering with little to back it up.
Most HFT is simply a sort-of clever attempt at arbitrage based on news or statistics. Nothing wrong with that in principle. That happens in pretty much every market even without HFT being involved. The relative speed of it in and of itself isn't objectively a problem. The question is whether the actions required to engage in HFT are causing practical or destabilizing problems for the marketplace. There is some evidence (such as flash crashes) that HFT might be introducing some new risks to the system which is certainly worthy of concern. There also are concerns that some parties are being given a privileged position in the market that they do not deserve since you or I as investors obviously cannot engage in HFT.
They are ACTING BEFORE Alice or Bob can which is why it is a TIME BASED man in the middle attack.
You are framing the issue in a way that isn't supported by the facts. What you are describing is EXACTLY the role a market maker plays. Market makers provide liquidity to the market by providing bid and ask (buy and sell) quotes and profiting on the difference between the two. Market makers are middle men who serve a useful role. There is nothing morally, practically or legally wrong with this. It is a practical action to create a liquid market. When it comes of market making HFTers who use market making strategies actually tend to reduce bid-ask spreads through competition which benefits Alice and Bob because both get better prices due to competition. It used to be that market making was provided by specialist firms but with HFT the role of specialist market makers is sometimes reduced.
There are some very real concerns regarding HFT but their (sometimes) role as a market maker isn't one of them unless we are talking about front running. Competition in market making demonstrably benefits buyers and seller by reducing spreads though competition. You WANT this to occur. Most high frequency trading has nothing whatsoever to do with market making and is really a form of statistical arbitrage based on news events and/or pricing models. They don't have or need privileged information the trade information and even if they do have such information so does everyone else engaged in HFT so any advantage they might have would be short lived and would benefit the traders at the end of the day anyway through reduced prices.
Short selling.. it is a scam especially 'naked' shots - where you bet on the price before you have the contracts in place.
Short selling is not a scam at all. In fact it is arguably very important to price discovery, providing a counterweight to excessive bullishness, ex-ante identification of asset bubbles and providing incentives to find fraud. Short selling in an of itself is just fine. That doesn't mean there aren't practical concerns that have to be addressed but the mere act of short selling certainly is not a scam.
Shorting is simply the act of selling something before you have bought it. Usually people buy something before they sell it but there is no fundamental reason it has to be done that way. In a short transaction you borrow the asset, sell it and then buy it back later and return it to the lender. The second order consequence of selling before you buy is that you tend to do it when you expect the price to fall because you want to sell high and buy low. Stock prices fall almost as often as they rise and there is no principled reason not to allow people to to bet on the directionality of stock prices. In fact when someone ends a long position, very often they are simply betting that the stock is going to fall. It's the same sale for the same reason, the only difference is that the buy occurred in the past instead of the future.
Now there are some practical issues that have to be addressed with short selling in order to have an orderly and reliable market. You are correct that an exchange whose procedures allow naked shorting to occur is asking for trouble because they can easily end up with a transaction that cannot be completed. It also opens a door to certain types of fraud. Naked short selling isn't illegal per-se because in some cases it isn't actually a problem but it's a type of transaction that tends to carry more risk than allowing it is worth.
Then you know nothing beyond what your prejudice limits you to.
I know "nothing"? Prove me wrong. Prove to me that religion is not about power and influence and money and tribalism. I've got a mountain of objective evidence that shows that religion is very much about those things so you've got a large task in front of you. Belief in a deity or proving the existence of one is a very separate issue from relgion.
Small minds aren't limited to theists. Gnostic atheists display small minded bigotry all the time, as you have just have.
Small minds rely on personal attacks rather than actual ideas based on observable evidence. I'm not the least bit ashamed to say that I think people who worship a deity through an organized religion are generally small minded, tribal, insecure, irrational and very often are being taken advantage of because that is what the evidence shows. If you can show me objective evidence of how they are not those things then I'll reconsider my position.
Personally, I'm agnostic, but unusual in that I am an agnostic theist. The Gnostic question (Can God's existence be proven?) and the Theist question (Does God exist?) are too often conflated by laypeople.
So you think god exists but know you can't prove it. There is no objective evidence to support your belief but it's fine as long as you understand it is irrational. So long as you keep those beliefs to yourself and don't try to force it on others then you and I have no quarrel. But you do realize that per your own argument on null versus 0 you are treating the theism question as true when in fact all the objective evidence is null or in some cases of specific religious claims, 0.
Furthermore you talk about the difference between theism and gnostism but ignore the fact that religion is a further separate issue. Religion is a social construct designed to create a powerful tribe based on theistic beliefs. You can believe in a god without being a member of a religion and without all the societal baggage and false stories that religions bring to the table.
But there are times when they are not - calls to destroy churches or make the propagation of beliefs illegal are just as onerous as any other call to set up a single state religion and just as illegal in the United States under the first amendment.
Who said anything about destroying churches or making propagation of beliefs illegal? I merely suggested a strong separation of church and state and strong education. We don't permit prayer in school because not everyone believes in prayer. We don't permit creationism in science class because creationism is not science and has no place there. If someone wants to believe in something irrational then they have every right to do so. That does not however mean they should have any right to push their irrational belief on to anyone else through the government or other coercive means. It also means that organizations formed around pushing irrational religious dogma on others (often at the point of a sword) are dangerous things that should be held at arms length by civilized society. If someone wants to quietly believe there is a god out there then there is no harm in that but that is demonstrably NOT what religions tend to do.
As far as how a deity fits into their picture, it is generally understood that the biblical stories are allegorical and not literal tellings of an event.
I don't think they see it as allegorical - at least not completely. If they are christian at some level they either believe that Jesus was the "son of god" or they do not. Jesus is not seen as allegorical. Whether the stories are literally true or not is irrelevant to the purpose of religion. If they do see Jesus as allegorical then there is little point in continuing to worship under that structure because then Jesus isn't real and there is no point in worshiping something that isn't real.
In general, religious belief does not hinge on anything that can ever be proven/disproven by observation, and is purely the domain of spiritual fulfilment and ideas that exist outside of the physical universe.
That is NOT how it works in the real world for most people. For most people there is some (varying) amount of overlap with the real world. Anyone who is rationally thinking about beliefs that cannot be proven cannot logically put any structure on them. You cannot say that there is a holy trinity or that god sent his son to earth and still claim that you are talking about anything outside the physical universe. You are putting structure on something you by definition cannot know anything about. At most you can logically say that there might be some sort of deity the nature of which we cannot ever know. The End. It's a very short and boring story though an intellectually honest one.
Broadly speaking: Religion (overall) attempts to subjectively answer 'why?'
Except they don't. Religion doesn't care about "why" at all. They make up some stories to tell people to achieve some social ends but they don't remotely actually address the question of "why". "Why" is a VERY difficult question. Richard Feynman said it better than I can. To answer the question of "why" you have to be in a framework that allows something to be true. Religion doesn't do this because religion is not concerned with truth - everything about religion is based on something that cannot be falsified. Saying some god did it is not any sort of answer to "why" anymore than your mother's justification when you were a child of "because I said so". They simply make up stoires until someone is satisfied and stops asking "why" but religion never actually answers any questions.
To my mind religion is fundamentally about power and money and influence. It doesn't answer any questions. It doesn't offer any real solutions. It certainly doesn't answer the question "why". At most it provides (false) assurance and thus comfort to some. It permits twisted and deluded people to gain positions of power over others based on nothing more than a lie due to their insecurities and mental limitations. Religion is like a virus of the mind to which we have built insufficient vaccines for.
The problem I think is small minds need a small God.
I'd modify that to say only small minds need a god at all. Saying there is a god if you think of the concept more broadly is simply variation of the claim that anything we don't understand must at some level be due to some deity. It's a god of the gaps argument more generalized. Maybe a useful tactic in the short run but I think ultimately self defeating.
Most scientists told him not to debate the creationists as it only brings more attention to them.
Debating them directly is probably pointless. Your debating someone about something that is fundamentally irrational. You're almost certainly not going to convince them of anything and anyone listening probably has already made up their mind on the topic. It's unclear what the point of such a debate might be. Maybe if there was something directly at stake like in the Scopes monkey trial it might be worthwhile.
No, the way to "debate" them needs to be through education, media and legislation. Strong separation of church and state. Strong scientific education. Television and media that makes the absurdity of blind faith clear and uncool. The more educated people are the less likely they are to believe in fairy tales. You aren't going to convert the faithful but you might be able to keep their children from being brainwashed.
Never forget however that in many places (including the US) the religious crazies outnumber the sane people. There are numerous states where atheists cannot legally hold public office. How this has passed constitutional muster eludes me.
Well it really happened and now the people he debated received enough money and even MUNICIPAL BONDS to build a life sized Ark.
Glad to see they put the money to productive use. I would consider that something of a dodged bullet.
That is true but in no case is Google getting paid by you. You are a COST to Google and that is how their relationship with you will show up on their financial statements. Google has to spend money on datacenters and programmers to get information from you that they can then use to sell advertising products to their customers for cash. To Google you are a vendor because the directionality of cash flow towards you is outward. I'm a certified accountant and I'm telling you how Google will see the nature of your relationship.
Now it is possible to be both a vendor and a customer of a company for different transactions. In my company we make wire harnesses. We have some customers who we also buy products from to sell to other customers. But you cannot simultaneously be both a customer and a vendor to the same entity at the same time.
If I go to a fair and buy a bunch of tokens that I then use to play some games, then the people that run the games turn those tokens in for cash - are they token sellers? They're game providers and the tokens are just a medium, similar to how I go to Google, to search and pay them with a bit of my screen space to show ads - Google then turns that screen space in for cash with advertisers.
The fact that you use a different form of currency doesn't change the nature of the financial relationship as far as Google is concerned. To Google, you are a vendor and you are most definitely NOT a customer unless you are paying them in cash money.
If you're looking at things from a pure "where do the USD come from?" point of view, then sure they're an advertising company - so are TV stations, newspapers, the sides of highways, buses, etc.
That is the perspective that matters here because it is Google's perspective. To Google you are a vendor because they (indirectly) pay you for a product that they then sell to others for cash. And you are correct, newspapers and TV stations ARE advertising companies because that is where the money comes from. Take away what brings in the money and the company will disappear.
So if I hire a piano teacher for my kids, and he agrees to accept payment in, say, fresh oranges instead of cash, he then becomes a customer even if I'm not selling those oranges to anybody else?
Don't be daft. Dealing with Google is not such a transaction. Getting your information and providing services to you is a cost to Google. They have to spend money to build services and technologies that they provide to you so the direction of cash flow to Google is outward. Technically it could be considered Cost of Goods Sold or more likely it would fall under SG&A. Google quite properly does not consider you their customer from an accounting perspective because you (probably) do not bring in cash to them. If you send money to someone (even indirectly) then they are a vendor. If you get money from someone then they are a customer.
Sorry, but that's not how it works.
I'm a certified accountant and I assure you that it very much IS how it works when you are talking about a for-profit company. The nature of your relationship to Google is that of a vendor from Google's perspective.
The form of payment is not what determines the relationship.
I didn't say the form of payment. I said the directionality of cash flow. HUGE difference.
If I was a vendor in this relationship, I would be the one setting the price.
How much control a vendor has over pricing depends on the product they are selling and who they are selling it to. If you are selling a commodity product like oranges then the vendor has little control over the price. If you are selling a customized proprietary product like an Oracle database then the vendor has a significant amount of control over the price. In this case you have limited control over the price because most of Google's costs are fixed. They have to pay for their datacenters and staff whether or not you are a customer and they have lots of other customers. You can elect not to provide them any information but that's about as far as it goes. Your information and attention is a commodity to google.
I'm a customer who pays with my information. Google then takes that information and offers it to advertisers
No you are NOT a customer. You are a vendor. You are "selling" your information to google (for services) who then sells it to advertisers. If you aren't paying cash to Google, you are not Google's customer. The maxim that "you aren't the customer, you are the product" isn't actually true because the product google offers is your attention and information about you. You are the vendor for that information. You "sell" to google and google sells to their customers.
It is possible to have more than one type of customer.
Very true but most of us are not customers of google. Who is a customer is ultimately dictated by the directionality of cash flow.
You are a customer when you use Google services. Google provides you a service, and in return you provide them some of your screen real estate.
If you do not pay Google with cash then you are NOT their customer. Google pays me through a form of barter for my personal information. That makes me a vendor. However I do not pay Google any cash and therefore I cannot be their customer. The saw that "you are the product not the customer" isn't quite true. Strictly speaking the product Google sells is the ability to communicate to/with me and I am the vendor of that product.
Google make its money mostly from advertising, but that's only they provide a good product to their customers that they are able to do that.
Their ability to deliver (your) eyeballs to their customers (paying advertisers) by providing you a useful service does not turn you into a customer. It makes you a vendor. You are "selling" your personal information to google in exchange for a useful service.
Movie theaters make most of their money from concessions, but they are not "pop-corn companies", the primary product is showing movies which enables them to sell their more profitable other product of popcorn.
Bad analogy. I still pay the movie theater for the seat. The fact that they make much of their profit off concessions doesn't change the nature of our relationship. However I would disagree that it does not make them a concessions company. You are what you make your money doing. Many gas stations are really convenience stores that use gasoline sales as a lure to bring in foot traffic. Movie theaters really are concession stands that use movies to lure in customers. Google really is an advertising company that uses free information search to lure in traffic. They are what people pay them for.
to be fair, they are not advertising to minors in any way in google apps, other than in branding.
They still are gathering valuable information from and about someone too young to legally enter into a contract. Google's business model for Google Apps is indirect. It also is a thrust at the vulnerable underbelly of Microsoft I use it in my work and they don't advertise to me directly either but I guarantee you that they are using that information to enable advertising somewhere else.
it's the browser plugin to automatically run arbitrary Java apps in websites that has a security flaw in its sandboxing.
That is one of the risks but not the only one. Plus the browser plugin comes bundled with other stuff so it's modestly annoying to try to separate that bit out from the rest.
Having Java installed isn't in itself a risk.
Of course it is a risk. Maybe not a huge risk but anything that allows arbitrary code to run on your computer is a risk. Even with security warnings it isn't hard to get people to run software they shouldn't.
The second is that LibreOffice does not require Java.
That depends very much on what you want to do with it. In my case I use the Base product which when I last checked still requires Java. There are some other features that won't work if Java is not installed. Yes you can get it working without Java but you cannot get everything working (yet) without it. In time I expect this will change.