You just need to tell the Federal Reserve to stop loaning out money altogether. The only thing they should be doing is 1:1 exchanges of US currencies (dollars to cents), and only printing to replace damaged currency. There shouldn't be more units of money in existence now than there was 100 years ago. The extra is going into the Federal Reserve's rich friends (sometimes called "investors", often overseas) pockets, a little bit at a time to a few people.
We could at least start with auditing the Federal Reserve.
What I completely disagree with though is the notion that deflation is necessarily a bad thing. It is bad for some bankers and the presumption that you must borrow money from some central organization in order to grow your business or finance a home, but for ordinary consumers and businesses which aren't in the financial services sector it really isn't necessarily a bad thing. The worst part right now is that the economies and financial structures of the world are geared to the presumption that inflation is inevitable.
Regardless, if gold-backed currencies came back into vogue, the value of those metals would rise to reflect true wealth from around the world.
I see deflation as a result of a more efficient economy. When technology makes it cheaper to create bread, the value of currency should deflate in relation to that. It's like you had 100 loafs of bread stored in the bank, and now you have 200 because better technology makes it possible for the same time investment of work. In the short term, most technology improvements are difficult to cope with, they require people to change their outlook on things. This is what is reflected in most "deflation is bad" arguments. But those who only see short term results will suffer long term consequences.
All in all, with the technology improvements we've had in the last hundred years, our currency should have deflated tremendously, maybe even 100 or 1000 times. The interesting question then becomes, "where did all the extra money go?"
The same reasons everyone else does it: because his boss told him too, because everyone he works with does it, because it's never been a problem before, because being the guy who won't do it would make him a troublemaker, etc etc.
At least when a person cheats company policy like this, he is doing what the person who the company put in charge told him to do. But when a cop does it, you get the government-monopoly-of-force destroying people's lives. To the cop, it feels the same, and the consequences are easily rationalized.
If Ron Paul won, well, that would be something, but quite honestly we all know that that particular outcome wouldn't be allowed since it would end the whole military-industrial complex stranglehold on the executive and legislative branches.
"Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle?" -- Patrick Henry
I'll be voting for him no matter how many people stand idle at home complaining to their monitors.
What the hell is wrong with being a statistical outlier? Elections aren't some horserace that you win by voting for the candidate that gets office, they are won when public opinion changes.
How about, let's stop using taxes to make social manipulations?
Politicians like making up groups of people and products and place little individual taxes on all of them. If they are in front of middle class people, they'll say "We're going to put a tax on the rich". If they are in front of the rich, they'll say "we're going to put a tax on those keeping their money overseas". If they are in front of the really rich, who keep their money overseas, they'll say "we're going to raise capital gains tax" (to protect the wealthy from those who would grow to overtake them).
They'll put a tax on tanning beds to pay for health care. They tax blank CDs to pay for the artist bureaucracy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_Home_Recording_Act. There are taxes on food, taxes on things like cigarettes, taxes on just about everything you can point at. Everyone loves the taxes because the only ones that they know about are the ones on somebody else.
Politicians split up the population into classes, both based on income and based on industry, using all these different kinds of taxes. People vote for them because they think "oh he's fighting for me". The absurd amount of overhead wears down any economy.
Anytime someone suggests taxing something to promote a social policy, even if it is a social policy you support, just say no.
Thanks for responding, and please don't take my disagreement personally.
Copyright is not evil in and of itself. I believe that it is a good thing.
That's certainly the popular opinion right now, but what if I was to suggest that restricting people's freedom to copy information freely is the greatest evil imaginable? "Freedom of speech" is not something to be casually ignored. Besides the freedom to copy information freely being a guard against all other forms of abuse, I would suggest that maybe to say to someone "stop singing that song you heard, it's copyrighted" is about as "evil" a law as could ever be imagined. That's just my opinion though, I can see where others might not agree.
Artists deserve to profit from their work.
What if I was to suggest that the only work people deserve to profit from is that work that others have voluntarily agreed to pay for?
I completely agree with the notion that taking someone else's hard work and calling it one's own should be illegal.
That's actually plagarism and potentially trademark infringement, not a copyright issue. I completely agree with you on trademark issues, but even plagarism tends to be punished naturally when it's found out and is a bit too subjective to try to put to law.
The problem isn't copyright in general, it is the terms of copyright that are unethical. Reforms need to be made including what can be copyrighted (there are too many things that are getting copyrighted that are way too broad and really shouldn't be), and definitely length (should be 20 years or life of author -- which ever comes first).
Why 20 years? Why not 19 years, or 21 years? Why have any limit at all if you really believe that "artists deserve to profit from their work"? Putting a limit only reduces the compensation that was claimed to be "deserved". Why would they deserve the compensation in the first place, but then not also deserve the compensation from selling the freedom to copy their work to someone who would use it for a longer term?
No, I don't want to eliminate copyright. Eliminating copyright will largely eliminate most of the time and money investment that goes into creating works.
I find the argument that people will stop making music when others are allowed to distribute that music to be an extremely depressing position. I think people will still create music and art.
Sure, copyright could be shorter. I see no problem with that.
Didn't you just say "Eliminating copyright will largely eliminate most of the time and money investment that goes into creating works" ? Why would you want to partially eliminate it then? That choice would just contribute to the negative view:
...a copyrightless world as one dominated by a lot of cheap work.
Perhaps in a poorer society the lack of copyright law would result in "cheap work". Or perhaps it will result in a world where the popularity of music and art isn't determined by corporate bottom lines trying to edge in on fads to make a quick dollar, but will instead be created by people who really enjoy the practice and do so in their free time. You say a copyrightless world would be dominated by "cheap work", you must live in a country where the radio music and television shows aren't the talentless work played in the USA.
The subjectivity of this legal argument, the subjectivity of fair use in general, the fact that it's impossible to browse the internet without unintentionally violating copyright, the enforcement of copyright being so infrequent and partial -- these characteristics on any law show that the law is a terrible idea. This ruling wasn't based on uncertainty of the facts of the case, it was based on uncertainty of whether the law had been broken at all when all the relevant facts are undisputed.
Furthermore, the terms on copyright are limited and the duration of copyright terms are arbitrary. If people really believed in copyright then there would be no limit on terms, or there would be a very soundly derivable reason for the limit to be exactly what it is set to.
Copyright is a law that gets 99% of it's support from the fact that it exists and people are afraid to challenge the status quo. Given that so many people even intentionally violate this law (which is not even properly a right since it places no demands on government other than general enforcement of laws), I really am astonished that the idea of eliminating copyright altogether is such an unpopular position.
The problem is that there's really no other choice that preserves democracy. Either you spend taxpayer dollars to ensure that everyone who meets some reasonable set of criteria (e.g. getting n signatures) is funded equally from the public treasury or you have elections in which the politicians are inherently for sale.
This is one of the few issues that is absolutely black and white. Giving money to a politician is a bribe, and those who give the most money will inherently have more influence. There's just no good way to prevent that. Public funding prevents corruption precisely because you are forced to support not just your candidate, but also everyone else, thus ensuring that politicians have no incentive to try to raise more money than their competitor. Without that built-in leveling, you cannot have a truly free election.
So if politicians must be publicly funded, then what constitutes an illegal bribe? If a guy gets a good deal buying a used car, is that a bribe? If someone buys a hooker for a politician, is that a bribe? Are birthday presents from family a bribe? From friends? From "friends"? Are you going to make a list of what financial transactions politicians are allowed to make and who they are allowed to make them with?
Trying to prevent politicans from being funded privately has 3 real problems: 1) It's impossible. Everyone has to buy something from someone sometime. 2) It's against the idea of freedom of "oh so many things", like speech (expressing your political opinion with money), association (who are you allowed to buy from), equality of law (you can sell your car to your boss but not to your congressman), etc 3) It doesn't address the real problem at all.
The real problem is that there is something to buy from politicians. Bailouts, buyouts, specials laws for one class of people (examples : minorities, certain income classes, etc), random taxes like a god damn 10% tax on getting tan: http://money.cnn.com/2010/03/24/news/economy/tanning_tax/
These are what are turning legislation into a giant auction. The solution isn't to regulate who is getting what money, that just makes things worse. It's just more potential money-laws up in the air for grabs. The solution is that when ANYONE votes in favor of special provision for any group, that that person gets voted out of office immediately. It should enrage the population. Vote for someone who isn't for sale. If your incumbent got bought, vote for anyone else, even if they support killing baby kittens.
...And voting for a 3rd (or 99th) party candidate will not make any difference.
Incumbents want you to think this, and it's not even remotely true. Under what measure does it 'not make any difference?' Elections are not horse races that you win by picking the candidate who gets elected. What matters the most is the long term policy that is established, regardless of the short term results.
Candidates tend to win on the margin, they may get 55% of a vote but thats only 10% more than their opponent. When a 3rd party candidate gets 3-5% of a vote, the campaign machines notice.
Did you think the RNC/DNC exist to promote philosophical positions? Try to name one potentially controversial position either corporation has held since it was started. They only exist to funnel money into the pockets of their owners and to maintain enough political power to keep doing that. Why do you think RNC/DNC wants you to believe that voted 3rd party is wasted? It challenges them.
Elections are won when ideas change, not when someone takes office. For example, who would you say has had a greater influence on political discussion in the last 4 years, Dr. Ron Paul or Barack Obama? Debt, eliminating handouts to foreign countries, war on drugs: the popular opinions on these things have changed a lot over the last 4 years. A third party candidate did that. By the measure of 'who is in office in congress', Barack Obama won. By measure of who changed most people's ideas, Ron Paul won.
If everyone who said "voting for a 3rd candidate doesn't matter" would actually vote for a 3rd candidate, things would change overnight.
Suppose a person had memorized a book or a passage from it, or learned to play a song on their own instrument. Copyright can prevent a person from being free to speak or otherwise offer their own knowledge to a willing listener. There's no more important right a person can have than that.
In a federalist government, the feds don't represent anyone. The feds represent the military power to prevent anyone from usurping the power of your state. Your state represents you. If you don't like the laws on something like capital punishment, move somewhere that has laws more to your approval. There are many things to disagree over, but people tend to have common groupings of positions on those. When the feds don't try to run everything, it is much easier to have a candidate that represents you.
Who modded the parent down? Except for the sarcasm, he is completely correct.
Under a gold standard (or any commodity standard) the supply of money is held fairly fixed. Without such a standard, a balanced budget at least ties the value of a unit of money to a taxable base. Anyone receiving a future payment from the governing body knows that when he receives the money it won't be devaluing the currency because someone had to be taxed of that money.
When you have neither a commodity standard or a balanced budget, then the money supply is continually increased and it causes "inflation", the decrease of the buying power of an individual unit of currency. Thus our deficit really is causing a tax on accumulated wealth, as long as that wealth is held in local currency and not being held overseas, in stocks, or in a commodity.
Parent is mostly correct, except that the main problem is that anyone with sufficient wealth won't be affected by the resulting inflation. It usually hurts people such as:
those getting raises that increase slower than inflation
those who were saving up to buy a house
those with contracts promising future payments
Public libraries, the subjectivity of fair use, and the arbitrary duration of copyright are all proof that everyone knows copyright is a bad idea but just can't admit it.
You could still vote for yourself. Or vote for someone who was against the war (hint: it wasn't Obama, but a certain doctor who held that position). It's not always about winning, sending a message with your vote is enough.
The police can legally follow you around in a car without a warrant. They argue that GPS tracking is the same thing. I don't agree with the argument, but it's not easy to argue that they're completely different situations.
So what if a non-police-officer wants to follow someone around, or put a GPS tracker on someone's car? Isn't that usually considered stalking? A minimum requirement for getting a warrant should be when they are doing something anyone else isn't allowed to do.
The above is a solution to the question "how can I flip sort a stack of pancakes in polynomial time?"
The question to be answered is: "let R(stack) be the minimum number of flips to sort a given stack. Let F(N) be the maximum value of R(stack) for all stacks of size N. Compute F(N)."
Or, more precisely since it is a decision problem, probably something like "can all stacks of size N be flip-sorted in less than F(N) flips?", but it's trivially polytime equivalent.
These french mathematicians showed that if you can compute F(N) then you can compute any NP problem in polytime. It does not however show that a solution to P=NP solves the pancake flipping problem.
The article an summary were not very exact in their wording.
Comments are like a higher level language. For the same reason you don't write out explicitly in C what the ASM commands will be, your comments shouldn't reflect exactly or even closely what your code does.
Comments are for giving a higher level description of the procedure. Good comment: "The module sorts a list of integers". Bad comment: "This modules goes through a nested pair of loops and reverses each out of place pair of elements of a list to produce a sorted list."
Commenting every line of code is horribly bad, because 1) it's not maintainable, code changes frequently and 2) it's just rewriting the code a second time, if they couldn't understand it the first time, how are they going to get it the second?
Even if your argument were correct at the federal level, I don't believe any state defines a right to drive. In all states, it is a privilege that may be revoked under certain circumstances, generally happening when a person has shown themselves to be irresponsible with a vehicle (whether that is being too dangerous, not paying tickets, or not having insurance).
Perhaps, but isn't the TSA a federal agency under the Department of Homeland Security?
Slashdot Mirror
You don't need a commodity based currency.
You just need to tell the Federal Reserve to stop loaning out money altogether. The only thing they should be doing is 1:1 exchanges of US currencies (dollars to cents), and only printing to replace damaged currency. There shouldn't be more units of money in existence now than there was 100 years ago. The extra is going into the Federal Reserve's rich friends (sometimes called "investors", often overseas) pockets, a little bit at a time to a few people.
We could at least start with auditing the Federal Reserve.
What I completely disagree with though is the notion that deflation is necessarily a bad thing. It is bad for some bankers and the presumption that you must borrow money from some central organization in order to grow your business or finance a home, but for ordinary consumers and businesses which aren't in the financial services sector it really isn't necessarily a bad thing. The worst part right now is that the economies and financial structures of the world are geared to the presumption that inflation is inevitable.
Regardless, if gold-backed currencies came back into vogue, the value of those metals would rise to reflect true wealth from around the world.
I see deflation as a result of a more efficient economy. When technology makes it cheaper to create bread, the value of currency should deflate in relation to that. It's like you had 100 loafs of bread stored in the bank, and now you have 200 because better technology makes it possible for the same time investment of work. In the short term, most technology improvements are difficult to cope with, they require people to change their outlook on things. This is what is reflected in most "deflation is bad" arguments. But those who only see short term results will suffer long term consequences.
All in all, with the technology improvements we've had in the last hundred years, our currency should have deflated tremendously, maybe even 100 or 1000 times. The interesting question then becomes, "where did all the extra money go?"
The same reasons everyone else does it: because his boss told him too, because everyone he works with does it, because it's never been a problem before, because being the guy who won't do it would make him a troublemaker, etc etc.
At least when a person cheats company policy like this, he is doing what the person who the company put in charge told him to do. But when a cop does it, you get the government-monopoly-of-force destroying people's lives. To the cop, it feels the same, and the consequences are easily rationalized.
If Ron Paul won, well, that would be something, but quite honestly we all know that that particular outcome wouldn't be allowed since it would end the whole military-industrial complex stranglehold on the executive and legislative branches.
"Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle?" -- Patrick Henry
I'll be voting for him no matter how many people stand idle at home complaining to their monitors.
What the hell is wrong with being a statistical outlier? Elections aren't some horserace that you win by voting for the candidate that gets office, they are won when public opinion changes.
it's impossible to prove something that is negative
Man I love statements that are proofs of their own incorrectness.
How about, let's stop using taxes to make social manipulations?
Politicians like making up groups of people and products and place little individual taxes on all of them. If they are in front of middle class people, they'll say "We're going to put a tax on the rich". If they are in front of the rich, they'll say "we're going to put a tax on those keeping their money overseas". If they are in front of the really rich, who keep their money overseas, they'll say "we're going to raise capital gains tax" (to protect the wealthy from those who would grow to overtake them).
They'll put a tax on tanning beds to pay for health care. They tax blank CDs to pay for the artist bureaucracy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_Home_Recording_Act. There are taxes on food, taxes on things like cigarettes, taxes on just about everything you can point at. Everyone loves the taxes because the only ones that they know about are the ones on somebody else.
Politicians split up the population into classes, both based on income and based on industry, using all these different kinds of taxes. People vote for them because they think "oh he's fighting for me". The absurd amount of overhead wears down any economy.
Anytime someone suggests taxing something to promote a social policy, even if it is a social policy you support, just say no.
Thanks for responding, and please don't take my disagreement personally.
Copyright is not evil in and of itself. I believe that it is a good thing.
That's certainly the popular opinion right now, but what if I was to suggest that restricting people's freedom to copy information freely is the greatest evil imaginable? "Freedom of speech" is not something to be casually ignored. Besides the freedom to copy information freely being a guard against all other forms of abuse, I would suggest that maybe to say to someone "stop singing that song you heard, it's copyrighted" is about as "evil" a law as could ever be imagined. That's just my opinion though, I can see where others might not agree.
Artists deserve to profit from their work.
What if I was to suggest that the only work people deserve to profit from is that work that others have voluntarily agreed to pay for?
I completely agree with the notion that taking someone else's hard work and calling it one's own should be illegal.
That's actually plagarism and potentially trademark infringement, not a copyright issue. I completely agree with you on trademark issues, but even plagarism tends to be punished naturally when it's found out and is a bit too subjective to try to put to law.
The problem isn't copyright in general, it is the terms of copyright that are unethical. Reforms need to be made including what can be copyrighted (there are too many things that are getting copyrighted that are way too broad and really shouldn't be), and definitely length (should be 20 years or life of author -- which ever comes first).
Why 20 years? Why not 19 years, or 21 years? Why have any limit at all if you really believe that "artists deserve to profit from their work"? Putting a limit only reduces the compensation that was claimed to be "deserved". Why would they deserve the compensation in the first place, but then not also deserve the compensation from selling the freedom to copy their work to someone who would use it for a longer term?
No, I don't want to eliminate copyright. Eliminating copyright will largely eliminate most of the time and money investment that goes into creating works.
I find the argument that people will stop making music when others are allowed to distribute that music to be an extremely depressing position. I think people will still create music and art.
Sure, copyright could be shorter. I see no problem with that.
Didn't you just say "Eliminating copyright will largely eliminate most of the time and money investment that goes into creating works" ? Why would you want to partially eliminate it then? That choice would just contribute to the negative view:
...a copyrightless world as one dominated by a lot of cheap work.
Perhaps in a poorer society the lack of copyright law would result in "cheap work". Or perhaps it will result in a world where the popularity of music and art isn't determined by corporate bottom lines trying to edge in on fads to make a quick dollar, but will instead be created by people who really enjoy the practice and do so in their free time. You say a copyrightless world would be dominated by "cheap work", you must live in a country where the radio music and television shows aren't the talentless work played in the USA.
The subjectivity of this legal argument, the subjectivity of fair use in general, the fact that it's impossible to browse the internet without unintentionally violating copyright, the enforcement of copyright being so infrequent and partial -- these characteristics on any law show that the law is a terrible idea. This ruling wasn't based on uncertainty of the facts of the case, it was based on uncertainty of whether the law had been broken at all when all the relevant facts are undisputed.
Furthermore, the terms on copyright are limited and the duration of copyright terms are arbitrary. If people really believed in copyright then there would be no limit on terms, or there would be a very soundly derivable reason for the limit to be exactly what it is set to.
Copyright is a law that gets 99% of it's support from the fact that it exists and people are afraid to challenge the status quo. Given that so many people even intentionally violate this law (which is not even properly a right since it places no demands on government other than general enforcement of laws), I really am astonished that the idea of eliminating copyright altogether is such an unpopular position.
Perhaps new ways of committing old crimes. "With a computer" isn't a new kind of crime, it's just a new way of accomplishing it.
...People deserve to get paid for their work.
I just did 50 pushups. Do you use paypal? Would you prefer to setup a regular payment plan for when I do work?
Perhaps people only deserve to get what's agreed upon voluntarily.
Yeah or vote him out and keep voting them out until you find someone better.
The problem is that there's really no other choice that preserves democracy. Either you spend taxpayer dollars to ensure that everyone who meets some reasonable set of criteria (e.g. getting n signatures) is funded equally from the public treasury or you have elections in which the politicians are inherently for sale.
This is one of the few issues that is absolutely black and white. Giving money to a politician is a bribe, and those who give the most money will inherently have more influence. There's just no good way to prevent that. Public funding prevents corruption precisely because you are forced to support not just your candidate, but also everyone else, thus ensuring that politicians have no incentive to try to raise more money than their competitor. Without that built-in leveling, you cannot have a truly free election.
So if politicians must be publicly funded, then what constitutes an illegal bribe? If a guy gets a good deal buying a used car, is that a bribe? If someone buys a hooker for a politician, is that a bribe? Are birthday presents from family a bribe? From friends? From "friends"? Are you going to make a list of what financial transactions politicians are allowed to make and who they are allowed to make them with?
Trying to prevent politicans from being funded privately has 3 real problems:
1) It's impossible. Everyone has to buy something from someone sometime.
2) It's against the idea of freedom of "oh so many things", like speech (expressing your political opinion with money), association (who are you allowed to buy from), equality of law (you can sell your car to your boss but not to your congressman), etc
3) It doesn't address the real problem at all.
The real problem is that there is something to buy from politicians. Bailouts, buyouts, specials laws for one class of people (examples : minorities, certain income classes, etc), random taxes like a god damn 10% tax on getting tan: http://money.cnn.com/2010/03/24/news/economy/tanning_tax/
These are what are turning legislation into a giant auction. The solution isn't to regulate who is getting what money, that just makes things worse. It's just more potential money-laws up in the air for grabs. The solution is that when ANYONE votes in favor of special provision for any group, that that person gets voted out of office immediately. It should enrage the population. Vote for someone who isn't for sale. If your incumbent got bought, vote for anyone else, even if they support killing baby kittens.
...And voting for a 3rd (or 99th) party candidate will not make any difference.
Incumbents want you to think this, and it's not even remotely true. Under what measure does it 'not make any difference?' Elections are not horse races that you win by picking the candidate who gets elected. What matters the most is the long term policy that is established, regardless of the short term results.
Candidates tend to win on the margin, they may get 55% of a vote but thats only 10% more than their opponent. When a 3rd party candidate gets 3-5% of a vote, the campaign machines notice.
Did you think the RNC/DNC exist to promote philosophical positions? Try to name one potentially controversial position either corporation has held since it was started. They only exist to funnel money into the pockets of their owners and to maintain enough political power to keep doing that. Why do you think RNC/DNC wants you to believe that voted 3rd party is wasted? It challenges them.
Elections are won when ideas change, not when someone takes office. For example, who would you say has had a greater influence on political discussion in the last 4 years, Dr. Ron Paul or Barack Obama? Debt, eliminating handouts to foreign countries, war on drugs: the popular opinions on these things have changed a lot over the last 4 years. A third party candidate did that. By the measure of 'who is in office in congress', Barack Obama won. By measure of who changed most people's ideas, Ron Paul won.
If everyone who said "voting for a 3rd candidate doesn't matter" would actually vote for a 3rd candidate, things would change overnight.
Suppose a person had memorized a book or a passage from it, or learned to play a song on their own instrument. Copyright can prevent a person from being free to speak or otherwise offer their own knowledge to a willing listener. There's no more important right a person can have than that.
In a federalist government, the feds don't represent anyone. The feds represent the military power to prevent anyone from usurping the power of your state. Your state represents you. If you don't like the laws on something like capital punishment, move somewhere that has laws more to your approval. There are many things to disagree over, but people tend to have common groupings of positions on those. When the feds don't try to run everything, it is much easier to have a candidate that represents you.
Who modded the parent down? Except for the sarcasm, he is completely correct.
Under a gold standard (or any commodity standard) the supply of money is held fairly fixed. Without such a standard, a balanced budget at least ties the value of a unit of money to a taxable base. Anyone receiving a future payment from the governing body knows that when he receives the money it won't be devaluing the currency because someone had to be taxed of that money.
When you have neither a commodity standard or a balanced budget, then the money supply is continually increased and it causes "inflation", the decrease of the buying power of an individual unit of currency. Thus our deficit really is causing a tax on accumulated wealth, as long as that wealth is held in local currency and not being held overseas, in stocks, or in a commodity.
Parent is mostly correct, except that the main problem is that anyone with sufficient wealth won't be affected by the resulting inflation. It usually hurts people such as:
those getting raises that increase slower than inflation
those who were saving up to buy a house
those with contracts promising future payments
Public libraries, the subjectivity of fair use, and the arbitrary duration of copyright are all proof that everyone knows copyright is a bad idea but just can't admit it.
You could still vote for yourself. Or vote for someone who was against the war (hint: it wasn't Obama, but a certain doctor who held that position). It's not always about winning, sending a message with your vote is enough.
The police can legally follow you around in a car without a warrant. They argue that GPS tracking is the same thing. I don't agree with the argument, but it's not easy to argue that they're completely different situations.
So what if a non-police-officer wants to follow someone around, or put a GPS tracker on someone's car? Isn't that usually considered stalking? A minimum requirement for getting a warrant should be when they are doing something anyone else isn't allowed to do.
I wonder how those who support criminals giving up their rights as a form of punishment would explain away the 8th amendment.
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
...as is losing the right to vote in elections.
Shouldn't people who are in jail be the most important people to defend their right to vote?
How we can do it in polynomial time but computers can't?
The term "computers" originally referred to humans who did computations.
The above is a solution to the question "how can I flip sort a stack of pancakes in polynomial time?"
The question to be answered is: "let R(stack) be the minimum number of flips to sort a given stack. Let F(N) be the maximum value of R(stack) for all stacks of size N. Compute F(N)."
Or, more precisely since it is a decision problem, probably something like "can all stacks of size N be flip-sorted in less than F(N) flips?", but it's trivially polytime equivalent.
These french mathematicians showed that if you can compute F(N) then you can compute any NP problem in polytime. It does not however show that a solution to P=NP solves the pancake flipping problem.
The article an summary were not very exact in their wording.
Comments are like a higher level language. For the same reason you don't write out explicitly in C what the ASM commands will be, your comments shouldn't reflect exactly or even closely what your code does.
Comments are for giving a higher level description of the procedure.
Good comment: "The module sorts a list of integers".
Bad comment: "This modules goes through a nested pair of loops and reverses each out of place pair of elements of a list to produce a sorted list."
Commenting every line of code is horribly bad, because 1) it's not maintainable, code changes frequently and 2) it's just rewriting the code a second time, if they couldn't understand it the first time, how are they going to get it the second?
Even if your argument were correct at the federal level, I don't believe any state defines a right to drive. In all states, it is a privilege that may be revoked under certain circumstances, generally happening when a person has shown themselves to be irresponsible with a vehicle (whether that is being too dangerous, not paying tickets, or not having insurance).
Perhaps, but isn't the TSA a federal agency under the Department of Homeland Security?