Benefit: Anything that either (1) improves the quality of life for the target (longer lifespan, more leisure time, happier life) without impacting the target's survivability or (2) improves the target's survivability without impacting its quality of life.
Harm: Inverse of benefit.
Culture comes into the mix in the gray areas, especially in determining how big the "target" is and what the current state of QOL / survivabiliy is.
Only if you assume you can define right and wrong independently (absolutely) of culture.
Assume? I can.
Right: Anything that benefits the species as a whole, or would benefit the species if we all did it.
Wrong: The inverse of right; anything that harms the species as a whole, or actions that, if everyone took them, would harm the species.
Oh, and the president's quote isn't a false dichotomy--it's an overzealous call to arms. There's no faulty logic in his mind--just brash and violent foreign policy. (Which, IMO, is long overdue.)
I dunno....if the human race survives another ten thousand years, we'll probably have good evidence to support a 'law' of evolution.
We have sufficient evidence NOW to make evolution a law--as long as we don't put crap like "we all evolved from apes" in there.
I'll even draft it for you: "In any environment, the creatures most fit for that environment will be the most successful. For any change in an environment, the creatures whose characteristics make them more fit to survive in that environment will propser while those that are less fit will falter."
If you could sell the "ring of zelda" (or what have you) for 500 real dollars, then people could most certainly make money... also, that would probably bring about a huge hacking effort to obtain said items for free, then sell them.
Hmm...
Wouldn't it be feasible to have only one existance of any object, and to track them using the same type of system where you track the actual players.
At the least, it would elevant the crime from "fraud" to "theft."
They should probably be called the theories of nature. As we learn more, we refine these theories.
They should be written as general as necessary to fit _every_ occurance. i.e., instead of "creatures that don't eat die", it should be "animals that don't eat die" or "life forms that cease taking in energy enter an inanimate state, usually breaking any multicelluar bonds they may have."
Of course, then we will have the same problems that we have with the "Theory of Evolution". People will say it is not true because it is still just a theory. Breaking laws seems worse than disproving theory.
Evolution is a bad choice to aruge about theory/law.
We have observable evidence that living creatures evolve--we could very easily teach the "law of evolution."
However, for some reason (I'm not about to conjecutre; I'm too biased) we teach the principle of evolution and the historical conjecture of evolution as if they were the same concept. This is why it's still a theory--because it's impossible to verify historical evolution, and thus historical evolution will never become a "law."
Thanks for showing how trivial it is to uninstall an unwanted app in Windows. Under Linux it goes something like this:
Actually, Windows Uninstaller UI is very nice. You DO NOT want users randomly deleting folders that they _think_ they don't want.
This is especially true in an system where you deal with folders and programs and whatnot. In an Apple like "drag the program to install, drag the program to uninstall" UI it's even better--but when the users can see the files, you don't want them to start randomly deleting them.
The reason I haven't booted into Linux recently is the PITA it is to add or remove something. I don't want to randomly have to delete a folder that I guess is what I want to remove; I want to be able to say "install this" or "uninstall that."
Well, that and Open Office 1.1 not being out just yet...
I always wonder why folks think that Enterprise needs to stick to the TOS timeline.
They're a "temporal cold war" going on, which was never even hinted at in any of the other series. There's a "NX-01" Enterprise, which never showed up in any of the "here are the enterprises" setups.
Enterprise isn't set "before" the other four series--it happens after. Cicso / Janeway / Picard won, the Federation controls the galaxy--and all was well and good until humans discovered time travel and started fighting about their own history--with the battleground being the aborted, destroyed-too-soon NX-01.
As with everything else in the states, the winner will be the one most important economicaly. All other concerns are secondary
Economically, the most important thing is rule of law. If money can buy anything, then we'll just get a thousand more Enrons and Arthur Andersons and Worldcoms.
As for your sig--when I correct someone on their grammar, I mean it in the friendliest way possible. I wish only to improve a skill that someone (obviously) is currently using.
Any ego boost I get from it is simple gratuity, and morally equivalent to that which OSS gives to the main coders and project leader.
Because we're humans speaking English. The assumption when humans speak english is that all numbers are base 10 positive whole numbers, unless otherwise noted.
A proper OCR of a book destroys that book. Feel free to take your old, old books which are not in print, and cut & scan them in. Transfer them to a media that will last until their copyright expires, and when it does expire distribute them.
Of course, in order to "register" a copyright (which gets you better legal protection, and used to be mandatory for any protection at all) you need to send a copy to the LIbrary of Congress--so those old books from the 30s and 40s are, theoretically, stored at the LoC.
Honest question: Can anyone think of a realistic scenario where it makes sense for a market-leader to open-source its product?
I can think of three.
One: A legal force (change in copyright law, antitrust suit, etc) compels them to.
Two: A radical fragmenting hardware shift catches them off guard, and they need to very very quickly cover every new platform.
Three: Their main product matures to the point where further development isn't cost-effective, they stop version incrementing, and "Open Source" to allow for broader support. (The other products would very likely remain closed source.)
Four: Their product ceases to make money, and they discontinue the line but gain goodwill by open-sourcing the last version.
If CN were really shrewd (which I am becoming more and more convinced they are not), they would license a show that a) actually had more than 26 episodes so i don't have to watch asteroid blues 298347923874 times, and b) is not continuity-dependent, so burgeoning anime enthusiasts don't need to sit in front of out-of-order reruns pretending to understand what's going on
Odd... they imported Dragonball / Dragonball Z, each of which have far more than 26 episodes--and they show them in order.
Continuity is NOT the problem here, cubyrop. The problem is them stretching their anime resources too thin for too small a source of good import material. *sigh*
Using religion and misinterpretation of religious writings to justify war and suffering is what got us into this mess.
Yeah, those darn Iranian theocrats--
Oh, I mean, those darn Taliban fantaics--
er, that extremeist Al---oh, never mind.
Iraq is as secular a state as America. We got in this mess because Iraq invaded Kuwait, we invaded to get Kuwait back, Iraq bristled at the sanctions and restrictions we left them wtih--and then a terrorist attack gave the USA the moral capital to take the initative against the terrorist centers in the world.
Yes, we probably have spent all of the political capital that Sept. 11 gave us--but if a free Iraq results, it will have been worth it.
Anyway, just remember that religon had almost nothing to do with the USA/Iraq conflict, up until some religious terrorists sparked us to action and a religious president carried the momentum to clean up a petty tyrant who should have been removed from power twelve years ago.
Personally, I've had enough of that sort of bullshit; I think 1000+ years of East-West conflict would be enough to convince anyone of that.
The default state of mankind is at war. Deal with it, or start campaigning to replace the UN with a strong intercontinental government.
The concept that everything must have a function is indicative that you live in a capitalist society, which assigns value to objects which provide utility
Actually, that's backwards. A capitalist "society" is built upon objects that aren't utilitarian at all--the "capital."
As for the value of art--art is essentially a "value-add" to otherwise less valuable raw materials. The paper an author's novel is written on is worth, by itself, about $3 new and maybe $.50 once it's been used. But the novel could be worth a heck of a lot more--and if the novel becomes big enough, the "original" manuscript would then gain its own measure of value.
Anyway--capitalist societies assign costs to objects, for whatever reason. A noncapitalist (socialst) society would work on a different medium, and art would be valued in a different way.
Blix (et al) have repaetedly shot down the US lies.
US: "Is Iraq totally compling"
Blix: "Nope, but he is sorta complying."
US: "That's not good enough, we're going to war."
This war isn't to "protect" anyone. This war is to enforce twelve years of ignored sanctions and an all-but-ignored peace agreement. It's just as proper to consider this "Gulf War part II" as it would be to consider it "Gulf War II."
I'm just worried that things will get out of hand.... how many millions are we talking before source is released?
Well, obviously, "however much they say at the start."
A reasonable code escrow system will be a gov't office that recieves source code, and that enters it into the public domain once a pre-set revenue from the project is met.
Open Source should win on its own merits; not through governmental fiat.
Meaning that he was no more a duly elected official than a vice president who became president!
Oh, wait... that doens't matter, the man's president, and bitching about it (from either side) won't change anything except give a few law students a topic for their papers.;)
Explain to me the difference between a Republican and a Democrat please?
Democrats are left-leaning American politicians that, in a gross generalization, believe that goverment has a duty to its people, and best serves its duty with a hands-on head-count method that tries to treat everyone fairly.
Republicans are right-leaning American politicians that, in a gross generalization, believe that government has a duty to its people, and best serves its duty with a hands-off, dollar-count method that tries to treat everyone justly.
(To be obvious: "Fair" is everyone getting lunch. "Just" is only giving money to those that work.)
It was this little tidbit that is supposed to explain why you can't exceed (or acheieve) the speed of light - if v=c, you have sqrt(0), and then you're dividing by 0. If you have v>c, you have sqrt of a negative number, and then you're dividing by that.
That doesn't explain WHY you can't exceed the speed of light--it's "simply" math describing the effect of not being able to.
The texts are nothing but devices to spread half truths and partial histories and facts related to a subject.
I want you to remember that quote. If I ever hear you arguing that accepted science shouldn't be challenged, or that a quack shouldn't be listened to, I'm going to find the computer you use to type that post and beat you with it.;)
An Effort to make the books more "readable"? Thats fucked up.
There is a world of difference between "well-written" and "dumbed down." Tossing out committees and having textbooks written by the same workforce size that creates every other book in the world is a Very Good Thing. Especially if said workforces are going to stick to their guns on history's ugly moments, and not fall to the lowest common denominator of unoffensive "historical honesty."
Oh, and as for basic skills and student-driven learning--I agree. And they should toss in another topic at 8th grade: Rhetoric. (That would be "the knowlege of how to argue.")
There are some disciplines where you have to walk before you crawl -- for example, aren't Newton's Laws just a dumbed-down version of Einstein?
No. Newton's laws are True Laws for the world in which Newton could observe. Einstein was able to observe a more complex world, and such reached more complex laws to fill in Newton's gaps.
Yet we teach them because they work pretty well and they're far more approachible for beginners.
Plus everyone and their brother is going to encounter Newton's laws. Very, very few people will actually encounter Einstein's--and those that do very likely will simply shrug and ignore it.
Sorry, I know I'm off-topic--but Einstein didn't "disprove" Newton; rather, found gaps in Newton's application to extreme situations and sucessfully derived new rules for these extreme situations--like the precise movement of bodies with a mass several times that of Earth and a distance with a very noticable light-delay.
Kingpin was a much more interesting villain than the Goblin, who was basically just a cackling idiot.
That was kind of the point, actually. Crazy, super-strength self-righteous villian.
I can't argue with that, though. I'm sad they used Goblin as the villain, and I can only guess that they were saving one of the weakest villains for the first of what they hoped would be a long franchise.
Actually, the Goblin's a pivotal Spidey villian--and the only one who had a real relationship to Peter Parker. He's a logical choice to go first.
Thankfully, we can look for a whole gamunt of baddies--Hobgoblin, Venom, Carnage, Green Goblin Jr., etc.
Slashdot Mirror
Benefit: Anything that either (1) improves the quality of life for the target (longer lifespan, more leisure time, happier life) without impacting the target's survivability or (2) improves the target's survivability without impacting its quality of life.
Harm: Inverse of benefit.
Culture comes into the mix in the gray areas, especially in determining how big the "target" is and what the current state of QOL / survivabiliy is.
Only if you assume you can define right and wrong independently (absolutely) of culture.
Assume? I can.
Right: Anything that benefits the species as a whole, or would benefit the species if we all did it.
Wrong: The inverse of right; anything that harms the species as a whole, or actions that, if everyone took them, would harm the species.
Oh, and the president's quote isn't a false dichotomy--it's an overzealous call to arms. There's no faulty logic in his mind--just brash and violent foreign policy. (Which, IMO, is long overdue.)
It's giving up your rights in exchange for the opportunity to buy them back.
No, it's like... them giving you a discount if you waive some of your rights.
Sort of like an insurance company charging you less if you agree to some odd demands from them.
I dunno....if the human race survives another ten thousand years, we'll probably have good evidence to support a 'law' of evolution.
We have sufficient evidence NOW to make evolution a law--as long as we don't put crap like "we all evolved from apes" in there.
I'll even draft it for you: "In any environment, the creatures most fit for that environment will be the most successful. For any change in an environment, the creatures whose characteristics make them more fit to survive in that environment will propser while those that are less fit will falter."
If you could sell the "ring of zelda" (or what have you) for 500 real dollars, then people could most certainly make money... also, that would probably bring about a huge hacking effort to obtain said items for free, then sell them.
Hmm...
Wouldn't it be feasible to have only one existance of any object, and to track them using the same type of system where you track the actual players.
At the least, it would elevant the crime from "fraud" to "theft."
They should probably be called the theories of nature. As we learn more, we refine these theories.
They should be written as general as necessary to fit _every_ occurance. i.e., instead of "creatures that don't eat die", it should be "animals that don't eat die" or "life forms that cease taking in energy enter an inanimate state, usually breaking any multicelluar bonds they may have."
Of course, then we will have the same problems that we have with the "Theory of Evolution". People will say it is not true because it is still just a theory. Breaking laws seems worse than disproving theory.
Evolution is a bad choice to aruge about theory/law.
We have observable evidence that living creatures evolve--we could very easily teach the "law of evolution."
However, for some reason (I'm not about to conjecutre; I'm too biased) we teach the principle of evolution and the historical conjecture of evolution as if they were the same concept. This is why it's still a theory--because it's impossible to verify historical evolution, and thus historical evolution will never become a "law."
Thanks for showing how trivial it is to uninstall an unwanted app in Windows. Under Linux it goes something like this:
Actually, Windows Uninstaller UI is very nice. You DO NOT want users randomly deleting folders that they _think_ they don't want.
This is especially true in an system where you deal with folders and programs and whatnot. In an Apple like "drag the program to install, drag the program to uninstall" UI it's even better--but when the users can see the files, you don't want them to start randomly deleting them.
The reason I haven't booted into Linux recently is the PITA it is to add or remove something. I don't want to randomly have to delete a folder that I guess is what I want to remove; I want to be able to say "install this" or "uninstall that."
Well, that and Open Office 1.1 not being out just yet...
I always wonder why folks think that Enterprise needs to stick to the TOS timeline.
They're a "temporal cold war" going on, which was never even hinted at in any of the other series. There's a "NX-01" Enterprise, which never showed up in any of the "here are the enterprises" setups.
Enterprise isn't set "before" the other four series--it happens after. Cicso / Janeway / Picard won, the Federation controls the galaxy--and all was well and good until humans discovered time travel and started fighting about their own history--with the battleground being the aborted, destroyed-too-soon NX-01.
As with everything else in the states, the winner will be the one most important economicaly. All other concerns are secondary
Economically, the most important thing is rule of law. If money can buy anything, then we'll just get a thousand more Enrons and Arthur Andersons and Worldcoms.
As for your sig--when I correct someone on their grammar, I mean it in the friendliest way possible. I wish only to improve a skill that someone (obviously) is currently using.
Any ego boost I get from it is simple gratuity, and morally equivalent to that which OSS gives to the main coders and project leader.
why are we assuming base 10?
Because we're humans speaking English. The assumption when humans speak english is that all numbers are base 10 positive whole numbers, unless otherwise noted.
Wish I could have saved them all.
You could have.
A proper OCR of a book destroys that book. Feel free to take your old, old books which are not in print, and cut & scan them in. Transfer them to a media that will last until their copyright expires, and when it does expire distribute them.
Of course, in order to "register" a copyright (which gets you better legal protection, and used to be mandatory for any protection at all) you need to send a copy to the LIbrary of Congress--so those old books from the 30s and 40s are, theoretically, stored at the LoC.
Honest question: Can anyone think of a realistic scenario where it makes sense for a market-leader to open-source its product?
I can think of three.
One: A legal force (change in copyright law, antitrust suit, etc) compels them to.
Two: A radical fragmenting hardware shift catches them off guard, and they need to very very quickly cover every new platform.
Three: Their main product matures to the point where further development isn't cost-effective, they stop version incrementing, and "Open Source" to allow for broader support. (The other products would very likely remain closed source.)
Four: Their product ceases to make money, and they discontinue the line but gain goodwill by open-sourcing the last version.
If CN were really shrewd (which I am becoming more and more convinced they are not), they would license a show that a) actually had more than 26 episodes so i don't have to watch asteroid blues 298347923874 times, and b) is not continuity-dependent, so burgeoning anime enthusiasts don't need to sit in front of out-of-order reruns pretending to understand what's going on
Odd... they imported Dragonball / Dragonball Z, each of which have far more than 26 episodes--and they show them in order.
Continuity is NOT the problem here, cubyrop. The problem is them stretching their anime resources too thin for too small a source of good import material. *sigh*
They'd find someway to ruin the feel of it, with their obnoxious editing.
As opposed to the obnoxious ending that's allready there.
Eva was great--right up until the end, where the perspective completely changed and thus killed any suspension of disbelief the series built up.
Sorry, man. Eva ruined itself.
Using religion and misinterpretation of religious writings to justify war and suffering is what got us into this mess.
Yeah, those darn Iranian theocrats--
Oh, I mean, those darn Taliban fantaics--
er, that extremeist Al---oh, never mind.
Iraq is as secular a state as America. We got in this mess because Iraq invaded Kuwait, we invaded to get Kuwait back, Iraq bristled at the sanctions and restrictions we left them wtih--and then a terrorist attack gave the USA the moral capital to take the initative against the terrorist centers in the world.
Yes, we probably have spent all of the political capital that Sept. 11 gave us--but if a free Iraq results, it will have been worth it.
Anyway, just remember that religon had almost nothing to do with the USA/Iraq conflict, up until some religious terrorists sparked us to action and a religious president carried the momentum to clean up a petty tyrant who should have been removed from power twelve years ago.
Personally, I've had enough of that sort of bullshit; I think 1000+ years of East-West conflict would be enough to convince anyone of that.
The default state of mankind is at war. Deal with it, or start campaigning to replace the UN with a strong intercontinental government.
The concept that everything must have a function is indicative that you live in a capitalist society, which assigns value to objects which provide utility
Actually, that's backwards. A capitalist "society" is built upon objects that aren't utilitarian at all--the "capital."
As for the value of art--art is essentially a "value-add" to otherwise less valuable raw materials. The paper an author's novel is written on is worth, by itself, about $3 new and maybe $.50 once it's been used. But the novel could be worth a heck of a lot more--and if the novel becomes big enough, the "original" manuscript would then gain its own measure of value.
Anyway--capitalist societies assign costs to objects, for whatever reason. A noncapitalist (socialst) society would work on a different medium, and art would be valued in a different way.
Blix (et al) have repaetedly shot down the US lies.
US: "Is Iraq totally compling"
Blix: "Nope, but he is sorta complying."
US: "That's not good enough, we're going to war."
This war isn't to "protect" anyone. This war is to enforce twelve years of ignored sanctions and an all-but-ignored peace agreement. It's just as proper to consider this "Gulf War part II" as it would be to consider it "Gulf War II."
I'm just worried that things will get out of hand.... how many millions are we talking before source is released?
Well, obviously, "however much they say at the start."
A reasonable code escrow system will be a gov't office that recieves source code, and that enters it into the public domain once a pre-set revenue from the project is met.
Open Source should win on its own merits; not through governmental fiat.
Bush was appointed president, not elected.
;)
Meaning that he was no more a duly elected official than a vice president who became president!
Oh, wait... that doens't matter, the man's president, and bitching about it (from either side) won't change anything except give a few law students a topic for their papers.
Explain to me the difference between a Republican and a Democrat please?
Democrats are left-leaning American politicians that, in a gross generalization, believe that goverment has a duty to its people, and best serves its duty with a hands-on head-count method that tries to treat everyone fairly.
Republicans are right-leaning American politicians that, in a gross generalization, believe that government has a duty to its people, and best serves its duty with a hands-off, dollar-count method that tries to treat everyone justly.
(To be obvious: "Fair" is everyone getting lunch. "Just" is only giving money to those that work.)
What is the phrase or action that will get the developers to actually do my bidding? I'm very busy and quite imperious.
"I will pay fifty thousand dollars for every bug I submit and you fix."
It was this little tidbit that is supposed to explain why you can't exceed (or acheieve) the speed of light - if v=c, you have sqrt(0), and then you're dividing by 0. If you have v>c, you have sqrt of a negative number, and then you're dividing by that.
That doesn't explain WHY you can't exceed the speed of light--it's "simply" math describing the effect of not being able to.
The texts are nothing but devices to spread half truths and partial histories and facts related to a subject.
;)
I want you to remember that quote. If I ever hear you arguing that accepted science shouldn't be challenged, or that a quack shouldn't be listened to, I'm going to find the computer you use to type that post and beat you with it.
An Effort to make the books more "readable"? Thats fucked up.
There is a world of difference between "well-written" and "dumbed down." Tossing out committees and having textbooks written by the same workforce size that creates every other book in the world is a Very Good Thing. Especially if said workforces are going to stick to their guns on history's ugly moments, and not fall to the lowest common denominator of unoffensive "historical honesty."
Oh, and as for basic skills and student-driven learning--I agree. And they should toss in another topic at 8th grade: Rhetoric. (That would be "the knowlege of how to argue.")
There are some disciplines where you have to walk before you crawl -- for example, aren't Newton's Laws just a dumbed-down version of Einstein?
No. Newton's laws are True Laws for the world in which Newton could observe. Einstein was able to observe a more complex world, and such reached more complex laws to fill in Newton's gaps.
Yet we teach them because they work pretty well and they're far more approachible for beginners.
Plus everyone and their brother is going to encounter Newton's laws. Very, very few people will actually encounter Einstein's--and those that do very likely will simply shrug and ignore it.
Sorry, I know I'm off-topic--but Einstein didn't "disprove" Newton; rather, found gaps in Newton's application to extreme situations and sucessfully derived new rules for these extreme situations--like the precise movement of bodies with a mass several times that of Earth and a distance with a very noticable light-delay.
Kingpin was a much more interesting villain than the Goblin, who was basically just a cackling idiot.
That was kind of the point, actually. Crazy, super-strength self-righteous villian.
I can't argue with that, though. I'm sad they used Goblin as the villain, and I can only guess that they were saving one of the weakest villains for the first of what they hoped would be a long franchise.
Actually, the Goblin's a pivotal Spidey villian--and the only one who had a real relationship to Peter Parker. He's a logical choice to go first.
Thankfully, we can look for a whole gamunt of baddies--Hobgoblin, Venom, Carnage, Green Goblin Jr., etc.