What's Aristotle's actual track record in politics? I don't think he is right, nor do I detect an argument in the quote which would address the points I raised. As far as "physic!=politics" - politics will always be constrained by the laws of physics.
Apparently your mileage does vary... my experience has been pretty good, my girlfriend uses skypeout to make calls from Germany to her parents in Taiwan, quality is consistently good, and the costs are very low. For longer calls, she asks them to switch on the computer, and then it's free anyway.
On the other hand, I had problems like you describe when going the other way (calling Germany from Taiwan).
[scan and search in books]
Imagine writing a paper on the literary impact of "The Beatles" or "Star Wars" scattered throughout diverse materials like romance novels or physics textbooks in a large library.
Resources - as everybody ought to know by now - are always limited. A replicator working at "no cost" as the OP envisioned is therefore impossible. Matter can not be created out of nothing, and to transform matter into something useful will consume energy.
You can transform the nutrients of the soil, a seed and water into a tomato while using solar energy when you plant and care for that seed. The matter contained in the tomato must come from somewhere, a certain amount of energy will be needed to accomplish the transformation. A replicator could do that differently, theoretically even more efficiently (though that's not very likely). What the replicator could not change is the fact that a certain input is needed to generate an output. It will have to obey the laws of physics.
Also, not everything of value is a produceable good. There are other things of value e.g. services, health and space. Once the Ferrari becomes available at "zero cost" the oceanfront property will be in even higher demand.
So what is your point: "it's generally impossible to store hydrogen"? Or "something bad happened once, anything remotely similar (or widely dissimilar) must necessarily fail"?
Actually, one interesting idea might be to use hydrogen in airplanes. One of the problems of commercial flight is the weight of the fuel, which contributes substantially to fuel consumption. So hydrogen would have a higher energy density, and thus could be used to decrease the weight.
Now assuming you'd have a hydrogen-based airliner, you could now perhaps use solar energy to generate hydrogen. (With the obvious problem that you'd need to get water somewhere, but maybe the engine would allow you to keep some of the water which is generated when you burn the hydrogen from your fuel tank.)
On the other hand: why should it be an excuse for anyone to engage in amoral behavior, that they are doing so in order to earn more money?
It seems a little absurd to expect morals of a person, and then if that person founds a company say "oh that's alright, the company can do whatever is legal". What would be the benefit of giving companies such a free pass?
Well, being a chip designer, some of the things people use as "proof" that a chip works at higher frequency disgust me. I know the amount of effort engineers like me put in to test that a device works, for a new microcontroller (admittedly for very saftey-critical applications). We spend several months just to write tester patterns - in addition to automatic test pattern generation (also a non-trivial task).
If you don't know what the critical path is - e.g. in an ALU - you don't know whether you have tested for that. Once you run the device out of spec you have to assume that it will produce wrong results. There is a potential for damage to the device as well, but this is independent of the device working correctly.
I don't think overclocking is bad as such. If you are using your machine to play games and can live with the risk to damage the CPU, no problem. However you should be aware of the fact that you can't trust the output of your machine if you do calculations.
It seems you personally understand the implications. That doesn't apply to everyone on the board though, and I didn't notice any prominent warnings on TFA so I think it's makes sense to add those to the discussion here.
It's unethical for a prosecutor to accuse someone who they know is not guilty. I don't think it's their job to get the number of convictions up either - they are supposed to convict the right people. Why should we ask anything less from prosecutors?
I'm certainly not a fan of US foreign policy, but what you write there is uninformed, badly argued and unreflected. When engaging in discussions try to do better than that. I really can't give you a better response, none of your points are worth taking seriously.
This is not a a big sample of course, but my Chinese friends tell me that internet access is quite cheap in China, even high-speed access. They are comparably well off I guess - however this could mean that the program may not be able to help everybody, but it could help many people.
Why would you support the right of a country to keep it's culture, but not the right of individuals to free speech?
If you feel a country should have a right to it's culture, isn't that a moral decision by you - based on your own moral code? If that's so, how is that fundamentally different for someone else deciding that the rights of individuals to free speech are more important, and that they should help people who want to engage in that?
I think you are correct that Iran is in much better military shape than Iraq was when the US invaded. However at the time of the first US-Iraq war, the Iraq-Iran war was just over. The conflict between the two countries had lasted for years with neither side winning. So it seems reasonable to assume that they had comparable military capabilities.
Considering how vastly superior the US military was then, I don't think the Iran has a chance now.
Another matter altogether is that the US has no chance in establishing actual control over Iraq for the near future and presumably wouldn't fare any better in Iran. I don't think the US has sufficient resources to occupy yet another country. It may be possible to merely destroy the nuclear infrastructure of Iran, but this would have severe political and economic implications.
I sympathize with the Iranian people about the treatment of their country by the US in the past. On the other hand, their current government equipped with nuclear weapons would be very dangerous. The US is certainly justified to evaluate military options there.
BTW: Scuds are basically the Russian versions of the German V2. Half a century ago that was a serious weapon.
No, and it shouldn't do. A trademark is not supposed to be an original work, it's just supposed to be an identifier for a company. (Like "Fred's Bakery".) There are other limits on trademarks though. Maybe some of those could apply.
Iraq had a history of possessing chemical weapons, but those were the weapons supplied by the US, right? Supporting terrorism - was there anything besides financially supporting the families of suicide bombers who get kicked out of their houses, regardless whether they agree with the terrorist's goals or not? What are the accounts of fatalities based on? It seems the US doesn't count Iraqi victims, so how do we know numbers? What were the numbers before the invasions, btw?
Please treat those as honest questions, I'd like to know your opinions and information on this.
Doesn't the trend in virus-writing go in the opposite direction? I have the impression viruses used to be really difficult to write, having just a small amount of space to store their code. Now it's a huge binary, or some visual basic script.
Cause intentionally crashing another person's browser is unethical. How do you know that this person didn't spend an hour writing an important letter via webmail and lost their work because they went to your website? Quite apart from gaining a reputation of a bully, with the obvious consequences, once you do bad things you just plainly stop being the good guy.
Well you only "need" this if you are actually going to download stuff from sources you don't trust. To see if you have a problem the survey should ask "From which of the following sites would you download software?". I suspect most people here would use the rule not to download from any site if they had any doubts about the site.
However if you don't use this rule, then McAfee won't help you for long. Eventually you'll visit a site which isn't covered yet by their tool.
Maybe they believe that in the end sanity will win? Is there really any high-tech company where it wouldn't be easier to copy the data to a memory stick or send it out via email? The company I work for even allows VPN access from home, meaning I can copy any data I have access permissions to. And still they are worried about cameras...
That's the housing market in the US, maybe. In many other places houses are built from stone. Outside walls are 30 cm thick were I live (on the ground floor, upper levels can have thinner walls, of course).
A business can charge for a service they provide. They can try to make their money without charging for the service, if they are so inclined. None of the responsibility for making this work is on the shoulders of the user.
For me personal rights are more important than the plan of a company to make money in some specific way. If that plan doesn't work out, I think it's up to the company to come up with another idea.
I don't like business plans which are based on forcing ads down my throat and wasting my time, in order to pretend something was offered for free. It leads e.g. to newspapers which print lies to please their advertisers, to movies which are ripped into pieces by ads and lots of other media corruption. And the costs for all this advertising are added to the product. (Where else would the money come from?) We pay for that advertising when we purchase the product.
I'd prefer to be able to pay up front. What's my obligation to support these business plans which I hate? Zero, zilch, nada.
Sure they do, but nobody has the right to call not looking at ads "stealing". It's an insane idea that you are commiting a crime, just because you don't conform to the behaviour a company would like to see. It's a dangerous idea too, because companies often successfully lobby to restrict your rights, just so that they can earn more money without updating their business model.
The definition is not uncommon, but it's basically useless. If anything and everything is considered art, then what purpose does the term "art" serve? By the same token, if we can not even agree on a definition of the term art, then all discussion whether something fits the definition is pointless, too. I suspect this is the reason why the panel attracted so little interest.
Slashdot Mirror
Also, I think it's reasonable to argue that wiretapping is a search, and the amendment wants people to be secure from unreasonable searches.
What's Aristotle's actual track record in politics? I don't think he is right, nor do I detect an argument in the quote which would address the points I raised. As far as "physic!=politics" - politics will always be constrained by the laws of physics.
On the other hand, I had problems like you describe when going the other way (calling Germany from Taiwan).
So ... are arguing for or against that feature? :-)
Don't we have blogs for that already?
You can transform the nutrients of the soil, a seed and water into a tomato while using solar energy when you plant and care for that seed. The matter contained in the tomato must come from somewhere, a certain amount of energy will be needed to accomplish the transformation. A replicator could do that differently, theoretically even more efficiently (though that's not very likely). What the replicator could not change is the fact that a certain input is needed to generate an output. It will have to obey the laws of physics.
Also, not everything of value is a produceable good. There are other things of value e.g. services, health and space. Once the Ferrari becomes available at "zero cost" the oceanfront property will be in even higher demand.
So what is your point: "it's generally impossible to store hydrogen"? Or "something bad happened once, anything remotely similar (or widely dissimilar) must necessarily fail"?
Now assuming you'd have a hydrogen-based airliner, you could now perhaps use solar energy to generate hydrogen. (With the obvious problem that you'd need to get water somewhere, but maybe the engine would allow you to keep some of the water which is generated when you burn the hydrogen from your fuel tank.)
It seems a little absurd to expect morals of a person, and then if that person founds a company say "oh that's alright, the company can do whatever is legal". What would be the benefit of giving companies such a free pass?
If you don't know what the critical path is - e.g. in an ALU - you don't know whether you have tested for that. Once you run the device out of spec you have to assume that it will produce wrong results. There is a potential for damage to the device as well, but this is independent of the device working correctly.
I don't think overclocking is bad as such. If you are using your machine to play games and can live with the risk to damage the CPU, no problem. However you should be aware of the fact that you can't trust the output of your machine if you do calculations.
It seems you personally understand the implications. That doesn't apply to everyone on the board though, and I didn't notice any prominent warnings on TFA so I think it's makes sense to add those to the discussion here.
It's unethical for a prosecutor to accuse someone who they know is not guilty. I don't think it's their job to get the number of convictions up either - they are supposed to convict the right people. Why should we ask anything less from prosecutors?
I'm certainly not a fan of US foreign policy, but what you write there is uninformed, badly argued and unreflected. When engaging in discussions try to do better than that. I really can't give you a better response, none of your points are worth taking seriously.
This is not a a big sample of course, but my Chinese friends tell me that internet access is quite cheap in China, even high-speed access. They are comparably well off I guess - however this could mean that the program may not be able to help everybody, but it could help many people.
If you feel a country should have a right to it's culture, isn't that a moral decision by you - based on your own moral code? If that's so, how is that fundamentally different for someone else deciding that the rights of individuals to free speech are more important, and that they should help people who want to engage in that?
Another matter altogether is that the US has no chance in establishing actual control over Iraq for the near future and presumably wouldn't fare any better in Iran. I don't think the US has sufficient resources to occupy yet another country. It may be possible to merely destroy the nuclear infrastructure of Iran, but this would have severe political and economic implications.
I sympathize with the Iranian people about the treatment of their country by the US in the past. On the other hand, their current government equipped with nuclear weapons would be very dangerous. The US is certainly justified to evaluate military options there.
BTW: Scuds are basically the Russian versions of the German V2. Half a century ago that was a serious weapon.
No, and it shouldn't do. A trademark is not supposed to be an original work, it's just supposed to be an identifier for a company. (Like "Fred's Bakery".) There are other limits on trademarks though. Maybe some of those could apply.
Please treat those as honest questions, I'd like to know your opinions and information on this.
Doesn't the trend in virus-writing go in the opposite direction? I have the impression viruses used to be really difficult to write, having just a small amount of space to store their code. Now it's a huge binary, or some visual basic script.
Sorry man, but that was a really stupid idea.
However if you don't use this rule, then McAfee won't help you for long. Eventually you'll visit a site which isn't covered yet by their tool.
Maybe they believe that in the end sanity will win? Is there really any high-tech company where it wouldn't be easier to copy the data to a memory stick or send it out via email? The company I work for even allows VPN access from home, meaning I can copy any data I have access permissions to. And still they are worried about cameras...
That's the housing market in the US, maybe. In many other places houses are built from stone. Outside walls are 30 cm thick were I live (on the ground floor, upper levels can have thinner walls, of course).
For me personal rights are more important than the plan of a company to make money in some specific way. If that plan doesn't work out, I think it's up to the company to come up with another idea.
I don't like business plans which are based on forcing ads down my throat and wasting my time, in order to pretend something was offered for free. It leads e.g. to newspapers which print lies to please their advertisers, to movies which are ripped into pieces by ads and lots of other media corruption. And the costs for all this advertising are added to the product. (Where else would the money come from?) We pay for that advertising when we purchase the product.
I'd prefer to be able to pay up front. What's my obligation to support these business plans which I hate? Zero, zilch, nada.
Sure they do, but nobody has the right to call not looking at ads "stealing". It's an insane idea that you are commiting a crime, just because you don't conform to the behaviour a company would like to see. It's a dangerous idea too, because companies often successfully lobby to restrict your rights, just so that they can earn more money without updating their business model.
The definition is not uncommon, but it's basically useless. If anything and everything is considered art, then what purpose does the term "art" serve? By the same token, if we can not even agree on a definition of the term art, then all discussion whether something fits the definition is pointless, too. I suspect this is the reason why the panel attracted so little interest.