Check the authors. I didn't bring it up, 'Attila Dimedici' did.
Uhuh. You still persisted in discussing the topic, despite the fact that the OP never once attempted to justify the actions of *anyone* who attempts to use threat of force as a way to intimidate political opponents.
So, if your point wasn't to persist in drawing a moral justification for the actions of these gun-toting right-wingers based on the actions of similarly crazed left-wingers, or to otherwise muddy the discussion with a tangential issue, what *was* your point? Or was your goal simply to change the topic so you can discuss the evils of the democratic party?
The current Administration is afraid of the Citizens.
Given the sheer insanity expressed in your comment and those of your brethren, I think it more likely the current administration is afraid *for* it's citizens...
And, once again, you're missing the fucking point. Once again, the GP did *not* say that what the Panthers did was right. In fact, he never mentioned them. You did. Furthermore, he never claimed that the Democratic party possibly expressing favoritism toward such groups was right.
What he said was: people bringing guns to rallies, and making veiled threats by referencing quotes about bloody revolutions, are, in fact, attempting to intimidate and threaten people, and that such behaviour is wrong. He never once condoned such actions by others. He unilaterally condemned them.
So, please, take your arguments and shove 'em up your ass. They are, at best, entirely beside the point, and at worst, an attempt to justify poor behaviour of one group by citing equally or worse behaviour by another. It's no better than Bush supporters crying out "Clinton did it, too!" whenever someone criticized Bush's actions, or equivalently, someone crying "Bush did it, too!" when someone criticizes Obama's actions. In short, it's the very definition of partisan hackery.
If you have short deadlines, you end up with issues similar to the bugs Ubuntu needs to smooth out every release. If you go with "It'll be finished when it is finished", Your stable releases can become ridiculously out of date between versions. Debian did a good thing by abandoning the open-ended release cycle in favor of the extremely long but predictable two-year deadlines.
'course, there's another, obvious solution: Code freeze at some predetermined date prior to deadline, followed by a stabilization phase before release. What, you can't get your code in before freeze? Tough shit, it goes into the next release.
The answer is: the average global temperature that we have right now (okay, maybe 50 or so years ago).
Why? Well, I shouldn't have to explain this, but I suspect you need it. See, civilization has adapted to our current climate. Local crops were bred and selected based on local growing conditions. Urban areas were placed in locations with access to ample water and food supplies, access to sea ports, and so forth. And people's lifestyles are specifically adapted to the areas they live in.
Change the climate, and suddenly we, as a race, are fucked. Existing breadbaskets are no longer arable. Existing water supplies dry up. And the local population can suffer catastrophically. If you want to see this in action, today, just take a look at Africa, where the rain belt moved north (possibly due to global climate change), resulting in catastrophic drought.
In short: we, as a race, want to prevent *any* climate change, either cooler or hotter, as what we have now, today, is what we're adapted to, and any change would, on balance, be a change for the worse, both in terms of economic and human costs.
I'm not missing the point, I'm saying that it's irrelevant. If the efficiency gains of "green" tech were sufficient to justify the costs (in the opinions of those paying for them) then there would be no need to encourage their adoption by force.
Oh please, that's just absurd. Both people and businesses do *not* look to invest in long-term efficiency. Hell, most businesses don't look past the current quarter. So it's hardly surprising that investment in efficient technologies isn't something a lot of people are interested in.
In short: the efficiency gains are there and easily justifiable, if you're willing to look five or ten years ahead. Problem is, most people won't bother doing that.
This idea that "business" wants to kill everybody for money is an idea that has a ridiculous amount of traction.
Err, that's not the idea.
The idea is that, if creating unsafe products, or polluting the environment, is profitable, they'll do it, because business is out to be profitable, period. And given the mountains of evidence we have demonstrating this fact (can we say "PG&E"?), I'd say the case is pretty well settled on this point.
In fact, economists even have a term for this: Negative externality. Look it up.
but can also involve pointing out factual but ostensible character flaws or actions which are irrelevant to the opponent's argument.
I'd say the AC being a moronic fuckwit is an important detail when considering the veracity of his claims.
'course, that's entirely beside the point, as the responder debunked the AC while *simultaneously* attacking his character. ie, his character attacks could be removed from his post, and the fundamental arguments would remain.
But, hey, if you can't win by argument, you might as well cry "ad hominem".
Do you not respect the opinion that some people have, mainly that torture is something physically damaging to an individual, and not simply mentally damaging?
That's an awfully strange definition. For example, if we were to follow your rule, we could stick electrodes in a person's brain to stimulate their pain sensors. Sure, it *feels* like they're on fire, but they're not, so it's not torture, right?
Please.
And, for the record, yes, I would contend that, in some cases, solitary confinement *is* torture. The movie "Murder in the First" depicts an excellent example.
Incidentally, the answer to your question "where do we stop" is simple: Would you be outraged if you found out a foreign nation was using the technique on your soldiers? Like, say, the way the Japanese waterboarded US soldiers, resulting in massive outcry and retaliation? Well, then odds are you really think it's torture, and are just trying to convince yourself it's not because, frankly, you're a pussy who's letting fear trump your sense of right and wrong.
Yes, because everyone knows there isn't a massive hardware cost of entry to achieve stability anywhere near Wikipedia. Simply having three million plus articles means that you'll need some fast, high memory servers to keep up to even the smallest loads.
Bullshit. Having a lot of traffic means you need fast, high memory servers. Having a lot of articles just means you need big disks, and big disks are cheap.
Hell, I could probably get Wikipedia running on my home computer, assuming I had a big enough disk. Of course, if my fork generated any level of popularity, I'd need to scale up, but by that point I'd have a community that could donate money, hardware, or help getting going. Hell, if there's really this massive anti-Wikipedia sentiment fomenting, that should be easy!
The sum of human knowledge is far greater than the sum of academic knowledge.
That's great. But you're making an odd assumption here: that the purpose of Wikipedia is to store the "sum of human knowledge". So, OOC, what the hell gives you that idea? Last I checked, Britannica wasn't out there trying to collect the "sum of human knowledge". They specifically exist to collect and summarize academic knowledge. That's why they exist. Wikipedia, being an encyclopedia, has the exact same purpose.
In short: Wikipedia isn't what you want it to be. Yeah. Tough shit.
At one time, Wikipedia seemed like a place in which everybody could contribute to share their knowledge.
If, by knowledge, you mean unsubstantiated anecdotes, yes, Wikipedia was once such a place. They've since raised their standards. I fail to see how this is a bad thing.
And if you want a massive collection of uncited anecdotes? Easy! Just start here. It's called The Internet, and since the 90's it's become a great place for people to post every random, unsubstantiated fact, fiction, claim, or allegation they see fit.
Buying a car which uses no gasoline, but still relies on burning coal is considered the pinnacle of being green.
Please. Three words for you: "economies of scale". Or do you *really* think it's better to have a bunch of little, inefficient ICEs running around in lieu of one big one?
Furthermore, using centralized electricity generation means centralized pollution, making it far easier to deal with (adding new filters to an existing plant is easy... good luck upgrading the catalytic converters on millions of cars), *and* you can use alternative energy sources. Yes, believe it or not, coal isn't the only method by which one can produce electricity.
Burning biodiesel is considered better for the environment than regular gasoline or diesel. Not because its emissions are considerably better, but because it comes from plant.
Yeah, it's call carbon neutral, moron.
Honestly, I've seen stupid posts, but yours is quite impressive.
Yes, and during the Medieval Warm Period and Roman Warm, assuming they are even comparable (and I haven't checked to find out), there was 7 billion people on the planet that we have to worry about.
Uh, because water vapour sits in the atmosphere for weeks before precipitating out. Relative to CO2 it's extremely transient. Moreover, the absolute saturation level for air is relatively low, so there's a natural cap on the amount of water vapour that can be pumped into the atmosphere before it just rains back out again, while the same is most definitely not true of CO2.
Honestly, do you *really* need some dweeb on Slashdot to do *all* your thinking for you?
Ahh, the ol' "GW could be good for us!" meme. Yeah, fuck the people who live on the coasts, or who subsist on farms that'll no longer be located on arable land. I'm sure moving billions of people will be easy and result in absolutely no hardship, right?
How much tax money do you think they are willing to vote for research into something called a charmed, strange, or bottom quark?
Very little, just as they don't value funding research into *any* fundamental scientific field, because America has developed a hostility toward all things scientific, and that includes fundamental research and the scientists that work on it. This would be why the US is falling behind in a whole range of fields, no matter how subjectively silly or not silly the naming conventions may appear to the average american idiot (as Greenday would put it).
There is a big difference between "we need better evidence" or "we need more evidence" or even "we have no evidence for it" and "it's impossible because we don't know how it would work, so we don't believe it".
Why? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. And if your current theory says something should be impossible, and that theory is fairly well established, then it's absolutely reasonable to respond with "Sorry, that's impossible according to currently established theory. Get back to us when you have your extraordinary evidence."
I would expect the same response if someone claimed to have found a way to, say, violate the laws of thermodynamics.
Nah, ozone in the upper atmosphere is created when UV radiation from the sun strikes oxygen molecules, producing lone oxygen atoms which combine with O2 to form O3.
If you want your atmospheric phenomena to be taken seriously, don't give them names that belong in an Austin Powers movie.
Yeah, no kidding! That's why I refuse to believe in fundamental physics and their stupid "quarks". Charm? Bottom? Strange? Really? Please... with names like that, it must be bullshit.
Thanks for suggesting that my comment is deluded. I'm afraid it's a bit worse than that, though. It's entirely rational,
Well, it would be, save for the fact that the real world conflicts with your personal vision.
See, in theory, corporations have less overhead and governments have more. It's a nice theory. It makes rational sense if you do a little thought experiment.
But there's a problem: in the real world, it doesn't work that way. Again, anyone who's actually worked in a corporation, or looked at the relative cost of government- versus corporate-run healthcare, would understand this.
Hence your delusion. You favour your theory over the reality of the situation. You're free to do that, of course. But it does make you look a little silly.
Showing up and only learning what you need for your job is not going to help you see a third decade. But hey, your career man...
Forget your career. Learning new, unique programmings languages is just fun and interesting, IMHO, and keeps me interested in the process.
That said, I can't stand Lisp. Honestly, if Perl can be written off as a "write-only" language, and can't see why Lisp doesn't go the same way. Now Haskell, on the other hand...
You invent experiments to PROOF you theory, not to falsify it.
Sorry, no, that's just wrong. You *can't* prove *any* theory, as there may always be some case that the theory gets wrong. This would be why no modern theory, no matter how well it's predictions match experimental result, has ever been promoted to a law (see General Relativity for an excellent example).
The purpose of experiment, then, is to test the theory and see if reality matches it. If it doesn't, the theory is falsified and you go back to the drawing board, either by revising the theory or positing an entirely new one. If, however, reality does match the prediction, you go on to the next experiment, once again seeing if you can falsify the theory with the next result.
Contrast this with Intelligent Design. ID can certainly posit certain predictions (eg, irreducible complexity of the eye). And you can certainly try to falsify it ("See, look, here are the chain of fossils that show the evolution of the eye"). But an ID proponent can simply declare that God made it that way, and then move on to the next prediction. IOW, the theory is impossible to falsify, as it always gives the believer an "out".
Slashdot Mirror
Check the authors. I didn't bring it up, 'Attila Dimedici' did.
Uhuh. You still persisted in discussing the topic, despite the fact that the OP never once attempted to justify the actions of *anyone* who attempts to use threat of force as a way to intimidate political opponents.
So, if your point wasn't to persist in drawing a moral justification for the actions of these gun-toting right-wingers based on the actions of similarly crazed left-wingers, or to otherwise muddy the discussion with a tangential issue, what *was* your point? Or was your goal simply to change the topic so you can discuss the evils of the democratic party?
The current Administration is afraid of the Citizens.
Given the sheer insanity expressed in your comment and those of your brethren, I think it more likely the current administration is afraid *for* it's citizens...
And, once again, you're missing the fucking point. Once again, the GP did *not* say that what the Panthers did was right. In fact, he never mentioned them. You did. Furthermore, he never claimed that the Democratic party possibly expressing favoritism toward such groups was right.
What he said was: people bringing guns to rallies, and making veiled threats by referencing quotes about bloody revolutions, are, in fact, attempting to intimidate and threaten people, and that such behaviour is wrong. He never once condoned such actions by others. He unilaterally condemned them.
So, please, take your arguments and shove 'em up your ass. They are, at best, entirely beside the point, and at worst, an attempt to justify poor behaviour of one group by citing equally or worse behaviour by another. It's no better than Bush supporters crying out "Clinton did it, too!" whenever someone criticized Bush's actions, or equivalently, someone crying "Bush did it, too!" when someone criticizes Obama's actions. In short, it's the very definition of partisan hackery.
If you couldn't already tell, I have a low opinion of Prolog and declarative languages.
Better not tell your database, it might get offended...
If you have short deadlines, you end up with issues similar to the bugs Ubuntu needs to smooth out every release. If you go with "It'll be finished when it is finished", Your stable releases can become ridiculously out of date between versions. Debian did a good thing by abandoning the open-ended release cycle in favor of the extremely long but predictable two-year deadlines.
'course, there's another, obvious solution: Code freeze at some predetermined date prior to deadline, followed by a stabilization phase before release. What, you can't get your code in before freeze? Tough shit, it goes into the next release.
What is the ideal temperature for the planet?
That's an idiotic question.
The answer is: the average global temperature that we have right now (okay, maybe 50 or so years ago).
Why? Well, I shouldn't have to explain this, but I suspect you need it. See, civilization has adapted to our current climate. Local crops were bred and selected based on local growing conditions. Urban areas were placed in locations with access to ample water and food supplies, access to sea ports, and so forth. And people's lifestyles are specifically adapted to the areas they live in.
Change the climate, and suddenly we, as a race, are fucked. Existing breadbaskets are no longer arable. Existing water supplies dry up. And the local population can suffer catastrophically. If you want to see this in action, today, just take a look at Africa, where the rain belt moved north (possibly due to global climate change), resulting in catastrophic drought.
In short: we, as a race, want to prevent *any* climate change, either cooler or hotter, as what we have now, today, is what we're adapted to, and any change would, on balance, be a change for the worse, both in terms of economic and human costs.
I'm not missing the point, I'm saying that it's irrelevant. If the efficiency gains of "green" tech were sufficient to justify the costs (in the opinions of those paying for them) then there would be no need to encourage their adoption by force.
Oh please, that's just absurd. Both people and businesses do *not* look to invest in long-term efficiency. Hell, most businesses don't look past the current quarter. So it's hardly surprising that investment in efficient technologies isn't something a lot of people are interested in.
In short: the efficiency gains are there and easily justifiable, if you're willing to look five or ten years ahead. Problem is, most people won't bother doing that.
This idea that "business" wants to kill everybody for money is an idea that has a ridiculous amount of traction.
Err, that's not the idea.
The idea is that, if creating unsafe products, or polluting the environment, is profitable, they'll do it, because business is out to be profitable, period. And given the mountains of evidence we have demonstrating this fact (can we say "PG&E"?), I'd say the case is pretty well settled on this point.
In fact, economists even have a term for this: Negative externality. Look it up.
but can also involve pointing out factual but ostensible character flaws or actions which are irrelevant to the opponent's argument.
I'd say the AC being a moronic fuckwit is an important detail when considering the veracity of his claims.
'course, that's entirely beside the point, as the responder debunked the AC while *simultaneously* attacking his character. ie, his character attacks could be removed from his post, and the fundamental arguments would remain.
But, hey, if you can't win by argument, you might as well cry "ad hominem".
So basically Wikipedia is another Britanica, only it's on the Web?
Well, on the web and collaboratively editable. 'course, the latter part is the primary differentiator and makes Wikipedia a... wiki.
Wait a sec, Britannica is already on the Web, so remind me why do we need Wikipedia if it's limited to what was published in traditional journals?
Why not? Are you saying there can only be one encyclopedia on the web?
Do you not respect the opinion that some people have, mainly that torture is something physically damaging to an individual, and not simply mentally damaging?
That's an awfully strange definition. For example, if we were to follow your rule, we could stick electrodes in a person's brain to stimulate their pain sensors. Sure, it *feels* like they're on fire, but they're not, so it's not torture, right?
Please.
And, for the record, yes, I would contend that, in some cases, solitary confinement *is* torture. The movie "Murder in the First" depicts an excellent example.
Incidentally, the answer to your question "where do we stop" is simple: Would you be outraged if you found out a foreign nation was using the technique on your soldiers? Like, say, the way the Japanese waterboarded US soldiers, resulting in massive outcry and retaliation? Well, then odds are you really think it's torture, and are just trying to convince yourself it's not because, frankly, you're a pussy who's letting fear trump your sense of right and wrong.
If your view is that an Encyclopedia is compendium of all human knowledge... then Wikipedia is a dead failure.
Uh, that's not an encyclopedia. It never was. Your inventing that definition doesn't make it valid.
So, once again... what's your criticism?
Yes, because everyone knows there isn't a massive hardware cost of entry to achieve stability anywhere near Wikipedia. Simply having three million plus articles means that you'll need some fast, high memory servers to keep up to even the smallest loads.
Bullshit. Having a lot of traffic means you need fast, high memory servers. Having a lot of articles just means you need big disks, and big disks are cheap.
Hell, I could probably get Wikipedia running on my home computer, assuming I had a big enough disk. Of course, if my fork generated any level of popularity, I'd need to scale up, but by that point I'd have a community that could donate money, hardware, or help getting going. Hell, if there's really this massive anti-Wikipedia sentiment fomenting, that should be easy!
The sum of human knowledge is far greater than the sum of academic knowledge.
That's great. But you're making an odd assumption here: that the purpose of Wikipedia is to store the "sum of human knowledge". So, OOC, what the hell gives you that idea? Last I checked, Britannica wasn't out there trying to collect the "sum of human knowledge". They specifically exist to collect and summarize academic knowledge. That's why they exist. Wikipedia, being an encyclopedia, has the exact same purpose.
In short: Wikipedia isn't what you want it to be. Yeah. Tough shit.
At one time, Wikipedia seemed like a place in which everybody could contribute to share their knowledge.
If, by knowledge, you mean unsubstantiated anecdotes, yes, Wikipedia was once such a place. They've since raised their standards. I fail to see how this is a bad thing.
And if you want a massive collection of uncited anecdotes? Easy! Just start here. It's called The Internet, and since the 90's it's become a great place for people to post every random, unsubstantiated fact, fiction, claim, or allegation they see fit.
Buying a car which uses no gasoline, but still relies on burning coal is considered the pinnacle of being green.
Please. Three words for you: "economies of scale". Or do you *really* think it's better to have a bunch of little, inefficient ICEs running around in lieu of one big one?
Furthermore, using centralized electricity generation means centralized pollution, making it far easier to deal with (adding new filters to an existing plant is easy... good luck upgrading the catalytic converters on millions of cars), *and* you can use alternative energy sources. Yes, believe it or not, coal isn't the only method by which one can produce electricity.
Burning biodiesel is considered better for the environment than regular gasoline or diesel. Not because its emissions are considerably better, but because it comes from plant.
Yeah, it's call carbon neutral, moron.
Honestly, I've seen stupid posts, but yours is quite impressive.
Yes, and during the Medieval Warm Period and Roman Warm, assuming they are even comparable (and I haven't checked to find out), there was 7 billion people on the planet that we have to worry about.
Tell your friend he's a moron.
Uh, because water vapour sits in the atmosphere for weeks before precipitating out. Relative to CO2 it's extremely transient. Moreover, the absolute saturation level for air is relatively low, so there's a natural cap on the amount of water vapour that can be pumped into the atmosphere before it just rains back out again, while the same is most definitely not true of CO2.
Honestly, do you *really* need some dweeb on Slashdot to do *all* your thinking for you?
Ahh, the ol' "GW could be good for us!" meme. Yeah, fuck the people who live on the coasts, or who subsist on farms that'll no longer be located on arable land. I'm sure moving billions of people will be easy and result in absolutely no hardship, right?
How much tax money do you think they are willing to vote for research into something called a charmed, strange, or bottom quark?
Very little, just as they don't value funding research into *any* fundamental scientific field, because America has developed a hostility toward all things scientific, and that includes fundamental research and the scientists that work on it. This would be why the US is falling behind in a whole range of fields, no matter how subjectively silly or not silly the naming conventions may appear to the average american idiot (as Greenday would put it).
There is a big difference between "we need better evidence" or "we need more evidence" or even "we have no evidence for it" and "it's impossible because we don't know how it would work, so we don't believe it".
Why? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. And if your current theory says something should be impossible, and that theory is fairly well established, then it's absolutely reasonable to respond with "Sorry, that's impossible according to currently established theory. Get back to us when you have your extraordinary evidence."
I would expect the same response if someone claimed to have found a way to, say, violate the laws of thermodynamics.
Nah, ozone in the upper atmosphere is created when UV radiation from the sun strikes oxygen molecules, producing lone oxygen atoms which combine with O2 to form O3.
If you want your atmospheric phenomena to be taken seriously, don't give them names that belong in an Austin Powers movie.
Yeah, no kidding! That's why I refuse to believe in fundamental physics and their stupid "quarks". Charm? Bottom? Strange? Really? Please... with names like that, it must be bullshit.
Thanks for suggesting that my comment is deluded. I'm afraid it's a bit worse than that, though. It's entirely rational,
Well, it would be, save for the fact that the real world conflicts with your personal vision.
See, in theory, corporations have less overhead and governments have more. It's a nice theory. It makes rational sense if you do a little thought experiment.
But there's a problem: in the real world, it doesn't work that way. Again, anyone who's actually worked in a corporation, or looked at the relative cost of government- versus corporate-run healthcare, would understand this.
Hence your delusion. You favour your theory over the reality of the situation. You're free to do that, of course. But it does make you look a little silly.
Showing up and only learning what you need
for your job is not going to help you see a third decade. But hey, your career man...
Forget your career. Learning new, unique programmings languages is just fun and interesting, IMHO, and keeps me interested in the process.
That said, I can't stand Lisp. Honestly, if Perl can be written off as a "write-only" language, and can't see why Lisp doesn't go the same way. Now Haskell, on the other hand...
You invent experiments to PROOF you theory, not to falsify it.
Sorry, no, that's just wrong. You *can't* prove *any* theory, as there may always be some case that the theory gets wrong. This would be why no modern theory, no matter how well it's predictions match experimental result, has ever been promoted to a law (see General Relativity for an excellent example).
The purpose of experiment, then, is to test the theory and see if reality matches it. If it doesn't, the theory is falsified and you go back to the drawing board, either by revising the theory or positing an entirely new one. If, however, reality does match the prediction, you go on to the next experiment, once again seeing if you can falsify the theory with the next result.
Contrast this with Intelligent Design. ID can certainly posit certain predictions (eg, irreducible complexity of the eye). And you can certainly try to falsify it ("See, look, here are the chain of fossils that show the evolution of the eye"). But an ID proponent can simply declare that God made it that way, and then move on to the next prediction. IOW, the theory is impossible to falsify, as it always gives the believer an "out".