'For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.' ~ Carl Sagan
Asking for people to behave rationally may not always be the easy way, but in my experience it is almost always worth doing. I think as a species we'd be a lot better off if everyone valued rationality highly, so I think we should encourage that in everyone.
They are just numbers. Bitcoins could therefore be subdivided as small as is reasonable or required for actual usage. For example, the main Bitcoin client currently allows you to display bitcoin figures in BTC, mBTC (1/1000 BTC), or BTC (1/1000000 BTC).
I believe the current Bitcoin protocol supports subdivisions up to 8 decimal places. Apparently this can be extended further with minor alterations to the existing Bitcoin protocol.
Also, they're just floating-point numbers. Should the need arise they could be subdivided indefinitely with only minor alterations to the existing Bitcoin protocol.
And that would be exactly the reason you have no right to a negative opinion.
I think non-voters most certainly have a "right" to a negative opinion, whether or not they choose to "voice" that opinion via voting. They simply view voting as a nearly useless (inaudible) way to voice their opinion; or perhaps that increasing the "percent abstained" figure is a more valuable way to express their opinion -- the "vote of no-confidence".
Personally, I would wager that posting my opinion in the Slashdot comments is likely to have at least as much, if not more, of an impact than visiting the voting booth ever will.
"If you don't order chicken or beef from the menu, you don't have a right to discuss the morality of animal consumption." But I'm a vegetarian!
It is a bit of a dirty trick, but the proof will be in the pudding. If putting your app on Amazon's store results in an overall increase in your revenue across all channels, it's worth having your app there. Conversely, if Amazon's sale-pricing of your app ends up over-cannibalizing sales on other channels with higher-percentage returns, the balance sheet will show it.
As I look at it, Amazon is essentially wagering that they can push at least 3.5x more volume of sales of your app (at 20% PPU to the developer) than you get from Google's Android Marketplace (which I believe returns 70% PPU). If they cannot do that, developers will be unlikely to continue publishing their apps there. Amazon will be looking to do this through sale pricing, bundling, coupons, targeted advertising, recommendations, and perhaps an Amazon Android phone.
If you think that having a theistic outlook on the world is irrational, prove it. Show me, point by point, exactly why there can't possibly be gods in the universe.
OK, I'll give it a shot.
I originally wrote this for a slightly different audience so please forgive any digressions.
I work strictly from definitions here, because you can be sure something that you reason about from your own definitions is correct. Whether those definitions also accurately describe what they are commonly understood to mean is something we can discuss.
Truth: something which follows from its assumptions (definitions).
"Henry VIII reigned for 57 years" is an empirical belief, and cannot ever be known to be true or false.
"If Henry VIII ever reigned, then he must have reigned for some time" is a valid truth, since it follows from the used definitions that it cannot be other than true.
"I see that black rock there" cannot definitely prove that the black rock was indeed there; it only proves that you saw a black rock there. You cannot prove that you experience anything to any other person, but it is undoubtedly true that you are experiencing what you are experiencing.
Truth itself is a definition. It is the word or concept we use to refer to that which follows from other definitions we have made.
Cause: something which has an effect, and "creates" that effect.
Necessary cause:
a cause which is necessary for an effect to arise; without the cause, the effect would not occur.
Your having a heart is a necessary cause for your continued survival. If you remove the heart, the continued survival does not occur; therefore it is a necessary cause.
Me not killing you is a necessary cause for your continued survival.
(These may not be literally necessarily true, but you get the idea)
Sufficient cause:
a cause which can create an effect, but is not the only possible cause which could do so.
Me buying a burrito at Taco Bell is a sufficient cause for them making money today.
Me kicking my monitor in is a sufficient cause for it to stop working right.
God: the creator of all things.
Totality:
everything without exception. Any thing you might conceive of as being outside of the Totality, is by this definition a part of the Totality.
Thing: some object that can be distinguished from the Totality.
That which can be distinguished from what is not that thing.
That which has a boundary of some sort delineating it from the Totality.
Finite: not the Totality; bounded. Any thing, as defined, meets this definition of finite.
Infinite: Utterly without boundaries. No thing can be infinite by definition. By this definition, the Totality is infinite -- utterly without boundaries.
A finite thing X must have one necessary cause, that cause being that which is not it: not-X.
This is because if you remove not-X, then X itself disappears. X relies on not-X to give it boundary and definition. Removing not-X removes that boundary and definition. Therefore not-X is a necessary cause for X.
Therefore, any given thing is caused.
Therefore, all things are caused, and are also finite.
It is interesting to observe that any time we conceive of X, we also have implicitly conceived of what is not X. We draw up a boundary between X and not-X. This conceiving could therefore be called a necessary cause of X's existence.
If we conceive of God as an entity of some type, with some attributes, then God is a thing. He has a defined boundary between what is him and what is not him.
Therefore, if God is a thing, he is finite.
Therefore, if God is a finite thing, he has a cause.
Being thusly caused, then by definition, this finite God cannot be the creator of all things, since he himself has a necessary cause (at least, "not-God").
There's absolutely nothing wrong with choosing to adhere to a faith, or to a religion, as long as you recognize that as a choice.
While I agree that we shouldn't deny people the right to believe what they like, it would be negligent to ignore the more serious harm that religious belief causes: a willingness to believe in fantasies with no grounding in reality.
However a person lives their life, they will serve as an example to others. If they live their life believing in fantasies and demonstrably false ideas, they cannot help but encourage, or at the least not discourage, such irrational behavior in others. Consequently it's not really possible to avoid "harming" others in this sense.
Such people are also more susceptible to being manipulated and accepting other baseless ideas as true; witness the audience of FOX News.
Thus I think everyone has a responsibility to eliminate their own irrational beliefs.
This is without even considering the probable benefits that would come from more people striving for a completely rational mindset.
From TFA, the rumored culprits are "IDF’s Military Intelligence Unit 8200,.... or perhaps the United States. Langer said last week that in his opinion at least two countries were behind Stuxnet."
So yes, the USA is one possible rumoured culprit.
And Unit 8200 is a part of the Israel Defense Forces.
I tried half a dozen online backup services before settling on this one, as it's the only one that was stable and not too resource-hungry on Windows. I also ran numbers vs. S3/Jungledisk and for the amount of data I store (~50GB) CrashPlan was much cheaper.
This makes me wonder what Google and the programming landscape in general would look like if Google had standardized on Python/C from the start, rather than Java.
Chrome's JS blocker seems pretty easy to use to me. When it's enabled, an icon appears in the address bar indicating JS blocking, and it can be clicked to whitelist the current site.
As long as you don't divulge your methodology to anybody, most people won't be able to "guess" your passwords between sites. I've even had friends witness me typing in some passwords in the clear, and they didn't recognize that a methodology was being used.
Of course, if a real dedicated hacker wants to crack your personal code, they would probably have enough information to do it if they had access to a small subset of your used passwords. Though if somebody's really that dedicated to cracking your passwords, most software and hardware solutions are also going to be just as easily compromised.
Given the requirements of many sites today, it's also a good idea to mix some numbers and capital letters into your scheme, so that you don't have to create any 'special case' passwords for the odd super-finicky site.
I've written a simple text-adventure Wave bot that lets you play zcode games -- including some of the old Infocom classics (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Leather Goddesses of Phobos) along with a few choice picks from http://ifarchive.org./ (More games soon.)
Just add bardbot@appspot.com to a wave to play.
Building on the sibling replies, I'd also like to point out that for third-world human-powered captcha-entering sweatshops, there is no advantage to randomly guessing the second word versus just entering both words correctly. You'll end up having to enter the same amount of correct words per successful captcha attempt either way.
I think it's fair to say Google is aware of the demand for extensions, since the dev channel version of Chrome currently has support for it. http://www.killertechtips.com/2009/05/13/download-sample-google-chrome-extensions/
Of course the extensions are still rather primitive, but they do work.
Ad blocker: http://adsweep.org or http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/46974 Flashblock: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/46673 Delicious & Twitter: http://www.chromeplugins.org/extensions/lightweight-delicious-bookmarks-twitter-chritter-extensions-released/ Facebook: http://www.chromeplugins.org/extensions/facebook-notifications-facebook-shortcut-extensions/ Mouse gestures: http://www.chromeplugins.org/extensions/chrome-gestures-google-chrome-mouse-gestures-extension/
I should probably put this comment onto my clipboard pastelist, seeing as how the "no Adblock" comment is ubiquitous on virtually every blog post concerning Chrome on the web (closely followed by the uninformed "no Mac" and "no Linux" comments).
Of course, a quick Google search would have revealed all of this...
Slashdot Mirror
'The more that pseudoscience goes unchecked in the world at large, the harder it is for truth to overcome truthiness... even if this is a small and relatively insignificant example.' ~ http://news.slashdot.org/story/12/03/06/0048259/why-distributing-music-as-24-bit192khz-downloads-is-pointless
'For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.' ~ Carl Sagan
Asking for people to behave rationally may not always be the easy way, but in my experience it is almost always worth doing. I think as a species we'd be a lot better off if everyone valued rationality highly, so I think we should encourage that in everyone.
A good prosecutor can put away a guilty man. A great prosecutor can put away an innocent one. So goes the thinking of many a prosecutor.
Sorry that should have read (nano)BTC (1/1000000 BTC) -- Slashdot ate my unicode character.
They are just numbers. Bitcoins could therefore be subdivided as small as is reasonable or required for actual usage. For example, the main Bitcoin client currently allows you to display bitcoin figures in BTC, mBTC (1/1000 BTC), or BTC (1/1000000 BTC).
I believe the current Bitcoin protocol supports subdivisions up to 8 decimal places. Apparently this can be extended further with minor alterations to the existing Bitcoin protocol.
Also, they're just floating-point numbers. Should the need arise they could be subdivided indefinitely with only minor alterations to the existing Bitcoin protocol.
Well, there goes the accuracy of my domain name regexes.
If you want to know what's next, I can dig out my old slides.
Yes please. This would be interesting to see.
And that would be exactly the reason you have no right to a negative opinion.
I think non-voters most certainly have a "right" to a negative opinion, whether or not they choose to "voice" that opinion via voting. They simply view voting as a nearly useless (inaudible) way to voice their opinion; or perhaps that increasing the "percent abstained" figure is a more valuable way to express their opinion -- the "vote of no-confidence".
Personally, I would wager that posting my opinion in the Slashdot comments is likely to have at least as much, if not more, of an impact than visiting the voting booth ever will.
"If you don't order chicken or beef from the menu, you don't have a right to discuss the morality of animal consumption." But I'm a vegetarian!
One potential problem with your first idea is that some newer phones (e.g. Android) allow you to manually select your APN.
It is a bit of a dirty trick, but the proof will be in the pudding. If putting your app on Amazon's store results in an overall increase in your revenue across all channels, it's worth having your app there. Conversely, if Amazon's sale-pricing of your app ends up over-cannibalizing sales on other channels with higher-percentage returns, the balance sheet will show it.
As I look at it, Amazon is essentially wagering that they can push at least 3.5x more volume of sales of your app (at 20% PPU to the developer) than you get from Google's Android Marketplace (which I believe returns 70% PPU). If they cannot do that, developers will be unlikely to continue publishing their apps there. Amazon will be looking to do this through sale pricing, bundling, coupons, targeted advertising, recommendations, and perhaps an Amazon Android phone.
If you think that having a theistic outlook on the world is irrational, prove it. Show me, point by point, exactly why there can't possibly be gods in the universe.
OK, I'll give it a shot.
I originally wrote this for a slightly different audience so please forgive any digressions.
I work strictly from definitions here, because you can be sure something that you reason about from your own definitions is correct. Whether those definitions also accurately describe what they are commonly understood to mean is something we can discuss.
Truth: something which follows from its assumptions (definitions).
Cause: something which has an effect, and "creates" that effect.
Necessary cause: a cause which is necessary for an effect to arise; without the cause, the effect would not occur.
Sufficient cause: a cause which can create an effect, but is not the only possible cause which could do so.
God: the creator of all things.
Totality: everything without exception. Any thing you might conceive of as being outside of the Totality, is by this definition a part of the Totality.
Thing: some object that can be distinguished from the Totality.
Finite: not the Totality; bounded. Any thing, as defined, meets this definition of finite.
Infinite: Utterly without boundaries. No thing can be infinite by definition. By this definition, the Totality is infinite -- utterly without boundaries.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with choosing to adhere to a faith, or to a religion, as long as you recognize that as a choice.
While I agree that we shouldn't deny people the right to believe what they like, it would be negligent to ignore the more serious harm that religious belief causes: a willingness to believe in fantasies with no grounding in reality.
However a person lives their life, they will serve as an example to others. If they live their life believing in fantasies and demonstrably false ideas, they cannot help but encourage, or at the least not discourage, such irrational behavior in others. Consequently it's not really possible to avoid "harming" others in this sense.
Such people are also more susceptible to being manipulated and accepting other baseless ideas as true; witness the audience of FOX News.
Thus I think everyone has a responsibility to eliminate their own irrational beliefs.
This is without even considering the probable benefits that would come from more people striving for a completely rational mindset.
From TFA, the rumored culprits are "IDF’s Military Intelligence Unit 8200, .... or perhaps the United States. Langer said last week that in his opinion at least two countries were behind Stuxnet."
So yes, the USA is one possible rumoured culprit.
And Unit 8200 is a part of the Israel Defense Forces.
Try CrashPlan http://b5.crashplan.com/landing/index.html
I tried half a dozen online backup services before settling on this one, as it's the only one that was stable and not too resource-hungry on Windows. I also ran numbers vs. S3/Jungledisk and for the amount of data I store (~50GB) CrashPlan was much cheaper.
They also have backup agents for Win/Mac/Linux.
This makes me wonder what Google and the programming landscape in general would look like if Google had standardized on Python/C from the start, rather than Java.
Popularity doesn't pay the bills when 90% of your players aren't paying for the game.
It does if you have enough players.
Chrome's JS blocker seems pretty easy to use to me. When it's enabled, an icon appears in the address bar indicating JS blocking, and it can be clicked to whitelist the current site.
Adblock for Chrome https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/gighmmpiobklfepjocnamgkkbiglidom
"Most Americans"
Fuck you. Where's your evidence to back this statement up you fucking douche.
This comment actually says a lot about how many Americans think.
Mod parent up! That's some pretty compelling math.
In order to use a unique password for every website and still be able to remember them, devise a secret scheme based on the site name.
An example scheme:
google.com -> 'xgooHoo'
digg.com -> 'xdigEig'
ebay.com -> 'xebaFba'
facebook.com -> 'xfacGac'
etc.
As long as you don't divulge your methodology to anybody, most people won't be able to "guess" your passwords between sites. I've even had friends witness me typing in some passwords in the clear, and they didn't recognize that a methodology was being used.
Of course, if a real dedicated hacker wants to crack your personal code, they would probably have enough information to do it if they had access to a small subset of your used passwords. Though if somebody's really that dedicated to cracking your passwords, most software and hardware solutions are also going to be just as easily compromised.
Given the requirements of many sites today, it's also a good idea to mix some numbers and capital letters into your scheme, so that you don't have to create any 'special case' passwords for the odd super-finicky site.
I've written a simple text-adventure Wave bot that lets you play zcode games -- including some of the old Infocom classics (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Leather Goddesses of Phobos) along with a few choice picks from http://ifarchive.org./ (More games soon.) Just add bardbot@appspot.com to a wave to play.
Building on the sibling replies, I'd also like to point out that for third-world human-powered captcha-entering sweatshops, there is no advantage to randomly guessing the second word versus just entering both words correctly. You'll end up having to enter the same amount of correct words per successful captcha attempt either way.
I think it's fair to say Google is aware of the demand for extensions, since the dev channel version of Chrome currently has support for it.
...
http://www.killertechtips.com/2009/05/13/download-sample-google-chrome-extensions/
Of course the extensions are still rather primitive, but they do work.
Ad blocker: http://adsweep.org or http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/46974
Flashblock: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/46673
Delicious & Twitter: http://www.chromeplugins.org/extensions/lightweight-delicious-bookmarks-twitter-chritter-extensions-released/
Facebook: http://www.chromeplugins.org/extensions/facebook-notifications-facebook-shortcut-extensions/
Mouse gestures: http://www.chromeplugins.org/extensions/chrome-gestures-google-chrome-mouse-gestures-extension/
I should probably put this comment onto my clipboard pastelist, seeing as how the "no Adblock" comment is ubiquitous on virtually every blog post concerning Chrome on the web (closely followed by the uninformed "no Mac" and "no Linux" comments).
Of course, a quick Google search would have revealed all of this
May I direct you to http://postsecret.blogspot.com/