Oh, and one other thought... remember that the idea of universal computing is founded on the Church-Turing thesis which is an unprovable hypothesis. Basically, it defines computability as the quality of being something that a Turing machine-equivalent can compute. It's quite possible that there are problems outside this class that can be "computed" but not by a Turing machine equivalent. This is the sort of thing that might be discovered by cleverly forgetting a few of the fundamental things we know about computability and revisiting the basic axioms. Thus, it's actually quite valuable to periodically revisit a basic question like that the GP raised -- there might be somewhere new you can go if you think about it in a different way.
Not that this is likely, but you never know... no harm in thinking about it, anyway.
That's the whole point of published standards. Web designers should design to the standard rather than to the implementation quirks of any particular browser. If they design their apps to adhere to the standards rather than to the implementation quirks of a particular browser (or, worse, to the non-standard extensions used in a particular browser) then any browser can easily maintain backward compatibility with the standard.
This does usually limit the availability of some features, but I've rarely seen must-have features that can't be achieved in a standard way.
I wouldn't say it's stupid, I would say it's actually a fairly deep sort of question about the nature of computation.
I suspect the reason that you, at least hypothetically, don't see this domino arrangement as a "computer" is that it's both a very trivial computer and it's not suited for scaling into a non-trivial computer by adding more copies. Otherwise, this is not THAT different from a standard electronic circuit. Both are physical systems whose outputs coincide with logical operations. By arranging their "inputs" and interpreting their final physical state according to some rule, you can determine the outcome of some other physical process that is at least approximately logically/mathematically equivalent to the computation you performed.
There's also the matter that this physical system needs maintenance after every computation, but that's not so different from a vacuum tube computer -- it's just a matter of degree of fragility.:-)
Well, I'm basing my experience specifically on MIT. It's not a typical private school in any way, so I suppose that biases my perspective.
Still, I'm not thinking about networking with the offspring of the rich and powerful so much as being in classes and labs (and rooming with) people who are likely to be among the major movers and shakers of the next generation. If you're interested in starting a company, having ties to a school like MIT can be enormously helpful in recruiting partners (and later, employees). This doesn't apply if you're not interested in that sort of thing, obviously.
I certainly wouldn't say that anyone needs to drop the $$ in order to be successful, but I don't think it's a waste by any means. For some people, it can be invaluable. I count myself among those who likely would have underperformed in an environment where I wasn't forced to excel just to get by. That's not something that's automatic just because a school is private, but the places I'm aware of where that's the expectation do happen to be private (MIT, Caltech, CMU,...).
There are reasons to do it. The caliber and dedication of your fellow students at some of these places is really not something you'll find at state schools. Sure, there are excellent students at state schools and louts at high end institutions, but in my experience, my generalization is true enough. These people can be great as competition, support, and contacts in the future. Depending on your own capabilities, learning style, and self-motivation, the $100k can be a very good investment.
So I wouldn't say it's a necessary thing, but there are very good reasons to go to expensive schools, for some people at least. If you "just" want to configure and maintain networks ("just" in quotes because I don't mean to denigrate the job -- it's valuable and not to be scoffed at), then the $100k might be a poor investment. If you might want to start a tech company or do something else, it's more likely to be worth it.
Well, it's clear that we have some philosophical differences. I find income and sales taxes attractive simply because they are straightforward to compute (most of the time) and relatively amoral. I have a problem with vice taxes (like cigarette or your hypothetical trans fat tax) simply because it's rather arbitrary to decide what is taxed. It ends up pushing an agenda... should canola oil be taxed more heavily than olive oil, etc. Income and sales are just a percentage of some liquidity in the market. It might not be 100% fair, but it's easy to figure out what'll be owed.
It also has the benefit compared to a property tax system that it is a tax on liquid assets. It's easier to set aside a fraction of that asset than, say, to have to come up with a very large tax payment if you happen to have a small income and a large, valuable piece of real estate. You can't just carve out a few hundred square feet of your house and sell them to pay the tax man.
I'm not one to argue that our tax rate or system is ideal, but I do note that it's hardly out of whack compared to other developed nations. I don't see it as deeply unfair, though, and I don't see that arguing it to be unconstitutional will fix the problems with spending.
For many government services, paying what you're willing in a competitive environment just doesn't make sense. Law enforcement, military services, etc, you simply can't choose not to use. If everyone except you decides to fund them, you still benefit, so it's not fair to let people opt out and take a free ride. I guess you can say this isn't fair in some sense, but as you say, life is not fair. Once you're an adult, you are free to find somewhere that doesn't have the onerous tax burdens and move there instead.
I do think the $1 million example WAS quantitatively significant. It was an example clearly designed to shock by the obviously ridiculous amount of "income" it generated. There's no way you can justify a million dollars worth of transactions for babysitting like that, and the government doesn't purport to. It DOES claim a percentage of the actual market value of service exchanges -- the exact number isn't important to me. What I don't see is why income is an inherently bad metric to determine tax burden. In many ways, it correlates with ability to shoulder a payment better than, say, a property tax. Having a valuable piece of property doesn't mean you've got liquid assets, whereas a large income probably does.
If both sales tax and income tax are bad ideas, what kind of tax isn't a bad idea to you? (I'm legitimately curious) It seems like you've got to fund the government somehow.
Your example of "Million dollar baby sitting" is a little silly simply because you've blown the cost of the exchange so far out of whack with the actual market value. Of course, it'd be absurd to pay $300,000 tax to the government simply for a barter exchange of babysitting services. It's less absurd to pay $30 of a $100 exchange and that's a more realistic cost for a service like that.
Maybe that'd be the case, except that the 16th Amendment is part of the Constitution. As such, it is not superseded by the other limits on the federal government outlined in that document that might otherwise limit its reach to foreign (or perhaps interstate) trade. Were the basis of the taxation founded only in law, there'd be a legitimate argument that its activities were unconstitutional. It's such a legitimate argument, in fact, that it was recognized and the taxation was given firm footing as a Constitutional Amendment. That's not a process that's undergone lightly...
Umm, I'm as big a fan of linguistic pedantry as anyone, but according to the OED:
fortunately, adv., In a fortunate manner; by or with good fortune, happily, luckily, successfully.
It certainly was good fortune for the passengers that it was separate. It's not that way by happenstance, but it's still fortunate. I think the word you want to get all huffy about is fortuitous.
fortuitous, a., That happens or is produced by fortune or chance; accidental, casual.
Interesting. In my case, it wasn't that I had anything against the GBA or its games so much as I just realized my lifestyle was better off without a little handheld game system. I spent enough time on computer/console games that I didn't need to infect my time away from those things with more games...
This sort of happened to me with the Game Boy Advance. I was going on a trip a few days after it came out and thought it would be a fun way to kill time on a plane. In that case, supply was plentiful, but the stores that carried stock wouldn't sell them unless you bought their package deal with some accessories and a handful of games. That pissed me off, so I refused to buy it.
Then, a few weeks later when the newness had worn off, I realized I really had no interest in the thing and I never got one. Don't regret it, either.
The sneaky part is that the RIAA is hiring these guys to break the law. Yes, that's sneaky, but it's entirely legal.
If the RIAA is knowingly hiring them to break the law, that is certainly not legal. If it hired them to "break" copyright on its holdings, then it's probably also implicitly given them license to do so. However, if these agreements were arranged with a "wink and a nod" as stated, it's going to be pretty easy for them to weasel out of it.
I think that doesn't mean he knows LESS about the technology so much as that he knows MORE about how to talk to management... As you say, he got you your approval...
I agree, I don't think it works if you let companies stake out particular pages. I think you've got to just randomize them so there's no appearance of connection between content and commercials. Unfortunately, that significantly decreases the value of the ad space, but otherwise it just undermines the appearance of independence that's necessary for a reference work.
Of course, that means that in the absence of a contract then, Amazon still sent the box set... I think they should at LEAST take it back in whatever reasonable condition its in (ie, even if its opened).
Amazon is acting like a good corporation, assuming you are an honest person and asking you to either return the unopened DVDs to make it like the contract never happened or to pay the price they intended to charge you to make the contract a valid contract.
I agree with most of what you said, but I don't think it's fair to limit it to the return of unopened DVDs. Amazon screwed up here and customers may have based buying decisions on the price that showed up. They should be able to annul the contract by returning what they have, opened or not. At that point, they've given up any undeserved benefit to the extent possible.
Sure, that denies amazon the chance to resell it as new, but so what? Remember: they screwed up. They can't expect to pass the costs for that on to the consumers. Business is rough... get better programmers/testers next time.
Calm down, calm down, this is only the Internet after all. I was actually just echoing the grandparent in the thread who originally called the a n00b. Not exactly classy, I'll admit, but it was also meant in jest. Maybe that wasn't obvious enough.
I don't know where you're coming from with your brief tirade against morons on the Internet. All I really said was that I don't see why I should be interested in this guy's opinion that online multiplayer gaming is overrated. I think Starbucks Carmel Macchiatos are nasty and I'd wager that the majority of Americans agree. Should I publish an editorial about this?
Well, maybe I should. Certainly there's no harm in it, just as there's no harm in this guy's publishing a discussion piece about his opinion. Likewise, there's no harm in my posting that I don't find his arguments compelling. Furthermore, criticizing my statements because I didn't temper them in anticipation of disagreement is kind of a silly thing to say -- I speak for myself and myself only. If anyone else wants to raise their voice in dissent, I'm sure they will (as you've done).
Sometimes "everything is fine" is the simple truth. I wouldn't actually argue (and, in fact, have not argued) that there's nothing that can be improved about online multiplayer gaming. However, that doesn't mean I agree that it's "overrated."
No, I'm pretty sure I do understand what the article was getting at. The author thinks online multiplayer is overrated. Great. He has his reasons, but I don't find any of them to be as compelling as you seem to. No, not every player is going to be interested in online gaming. Fine, great. But there are thousands upon thousands who are. The article struck me as a fluff piece based on whatever rationale this guy could come up with one day. And, as an editorial, that's fine, but I don't really see any reason to give particular weight to his opinion on the matter.
As for griefers, cheaters, and skill-level matching, these are problems with online games, sure. They're frustrating at times, but in my experience it's still possible to find a decent game most of the time. Ranking systems help with the skill level matching, so in the games I've played at least, really it's just the asshats that bring things down. I don't see either of these as damning flaws that can't be overcome.
Oh, and thanks for calling me a moron, it really added a touch of class to your post.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, and one other thought... remember that the idea of universal computing is founded on the Church-Turing thesis which is an unprovable hypothesis. Basically, it defines computability as the quality of being something that a Turing machine-equivalent can compute. It's quite possible that there are problems outside this class that can be "computed" but not by a Turing machine equivalent. This is the sort of thing that might be discovered by cleverly forgetting a few of the fundamental things we know about computability and revisiting the basic axioms. Thus, it's actually quite valuable to periodically revisit a basic question like that the GP raised -- there might be somewhere new you can go if you think about it in a different way.
Not that this is likely, but you never know... no harm in thinking about it, anyway.
That's the whole point of published standards. Web designers should design to the standard rather than to the implementation quirks of any particular browser. If they design their apps to adhere to the standards rather than to the implementation quirks of a particular browser (or, worse, to the non-standard extensions used in a particular browser) then any browser can easily maintain backward compatibility with the standard.
This does usually limit the availability of some features, but I've rarely seen must-have features that can't be achieved in a standard way.
True enough, but it at least means it wasn't a dumb question, especially for someone not familiar with computer science.
I wouldn't say it's stupid, I would say it's actually a fairly deep sort of question about the nature of computation.
:-)
I suspect the reason that you, at least hypothetically, don't see this domino arrangement as a "computer" is that it's both a very trivial computer and it's not suited for scaling into a non-trivial computer by adding more copies. Otherwise, this is not THAT different from a standard electronic circuit. Both are physical systems whose outputs coincide with logical operations. By arranging their "inputs" and interpreting their final physical state according to some rule, you can determine the outcome of some other physical process that is at least approximately logically/mathematically equivalent to the computation you performed.
There's also the matter that this physical system needs maintenance after every computation, but that's not so different from a vacuum tube computer -- it's just a matter of degree of fragility.
... and these speed bumps are on the interstate... er, I mean, the Information Superhighway
Well, I'm basing my experience specifically on MIT. It's not a typical private school in any way, so I suppose that biases my perspective.
...).
Still, I'm not thinking about networking with the offspring of the rich and powerful so much as being in classes and labs (and rooming with) people who are likely to be among the major movers and shakers of the next generation. If you're interested in starting a company, having ties to a school like MIT can be enormously helpful in recruiting partners (and later, employees). This doesn't apply if you're not interested in that sort of thing, obviously.
I certainly wouldn't say that anyone needs to drop the $$ in order to be successful, but I don't think it's a waste by any means. For some people, it can be invaluable. I count myself among those who likely would have underperformed in an environment where I wasn't forced to excel just to get by. That's not something that's automatic just because a school is private, but the places I'm aware of where that's the expectation do happen to be private (MIT, Caltech, CMU,
There are reasons to do it. The caliber and dedication of your fellow students at some of these places is really not something you'll find at state schools. Sure, there are excellent students at state schools and louts at high end institutions, but in my experience, my generalization is true enough. These people can be great as competition, support, and contacts in the future. Depending on your own capabilities, learning style, and self-motivation, the $100k can be a very good investment.
So I wouldn't say it's a necessary thing, but there are very good reasons to go to expensive schools, for some people at least. If you "just" want to configure and maintain networks ("just" in quotes because I don't mean to denigrate the job -- it's valuable and not to be scoffed at), then the $100k might be a poor investment. If you might want to start a tech company or do something else, it's more likely to be worth it.
Well, it's clear that we have some philosophical differences. I find income and sales taxes attractive simply because they are straightforward to compute (most of the time) and relatively amoral. I have a problem with vice taxes (like cigarette or your hypothetical trans fat tax) simply because it's rather arbitrary to decide what is taxed. It ends up pushing an agenda... should canola oil be taxed more heavily than olive oil, etc. Income and sales are just a percentage of some liquidity in the market. It might not be 100% fair, but it's easy to figure out what'll be owed.
It also has the benefit compared to a property tax system that it is a tax on liquid assets. It's easier to set aside a fraction of that asset than, say, to have to come up with a very large tax payment if you happen to have a small income and a large, valuable piece of real estate. You can't just carve out a few hundred square feet of your house and sell them to pay the tax man.
I'm not one to argue that our tax rate or system is ideal, but I do note that it's hardly out of whack compared to other developed nations. I don't see it as deeply unfair, though, and I don't see that arguing it to be unconstitutional will fix the problems with spending.
For many government services, paying what you're willing in a competitive environment just doesn't make sense. Law enforcement, military services, etc, you simply can't choose not to use. If everyone except you decides to fund them, you still benefit, so it's not fair to let people opt out and take a free ride. I guess you can say this isn't fair in some sense, but as you say, life is not fair. Once you're an adult, you are free to find somewhere that doesn't have the onerous tax burdens and move there instead.
I do think the $1 million example WAS quantitatively significant. It was an example clearly designed to shock by the obviously ridiculous amount of "income" it generated. There's no way you can justify a million dollars worth of transactions for babysitting like that, and the government doesn't purport to. It DOES claim a percentage of the actual market value of service exchanges -- the exact number isn't important to me. What I don't see is why income is an inherently bad metric to determine tax burden. In many ways, it correlates with ability to shoulder a payment better than, say, a property tax. Having a valuable piece of property doesn't mean you've got liquid assets, whereas a large income probably does.
If both sales tax and income tax are bad ideas, what kind of tax isn't a bad idea to you? (I'm legitimately curious) It seems like you've got to fund the government somehow.
Your example of "Million dollar baby sitting" is a little silly simply because you've blown the cost of the exchange so far out of whack with the actual market value. Of course, it'd be absurd to pay $300,000 tax to the government simply for a barter exchange of babysitting services. It's less absurd to pay $30 of a $100 exchange and that's a more realistic cost for a service like that.
Maybe that'd be the case, except that the 16th Amendment is part of the Constitution. As such, it is not superseded by the other limits on the federal government outlined in that document that might otherwise limit its reach to foreign (or perhaps interstate) trade. Were the basis of the taxation founded only in law, there'd be a legitimate argument that its activities were unconstitutional. It's such a legitimate argument, in fact, that it was recognized and the taxation was given firm footing as a Constitutional Amendment. That's not a process that's undergone lightly...
Interesting. In my case, it wasn't that I had anything against the GBA or its games so much as I just realized my lifestyle was better off without a little handheld game system. I spent enough time on computer/console games that I didn't need to infect my time away from those things with more games...
This sort of happened to me with the Game Boy Advance. I was going on a trip a few days after it came out and thought it would be a fun way to kill time on a plane. In that case, supply was plentiful, but the stores that carried stock wouldn't sell them unless you bought their package deal with some accessories and a handful of games. That pissed me off, so I refused to buy it.
Then, a few weeks later when the newness had worn off, I realized I really had no interest in the thing and I never got one. Don't regret it, either.
Definitely agree with you about entrapment. Thanks for clarifying.
I think that doesn't mean he knows LESS about the technology so much as that he knows MORE about how to talk to management... As you say, he got you your approval...
Yeah, get your entertainment from corporate TV and your information from other sources.
I agree, I don't think it works if you let companies stake out particular pages. I think you've got to just randomize them so there's no appearance of connection between content and commercials. Unfortunately, that significantly decreases the value of the ad space, but otherwise it just undermines the appearance of independence that's necessary for a reference work.
Best post in this thread. Well said, Mr Coward.
Of course, that means that in the absence of a contract then, Amazon still sent the box set... I think they should at LEAST take it back in whatever reasonable condition its in (ie, even if its opened).
No, you simply can't. That is a gift, not a contract, and (generally at least), US law will not recognize or aid in enforcing such an agreement.
Sure, that denies amazon the chance to resell it as new, but so what? Remember: they screwed up. They can't expect to pass the costs for that on to the consumers. Business is rough... get better programmers/testers next time.
Calm down, calm down, this is only the Internet after all. I was actually just echoing the grandparent in the thread who originally called the a n00b. Not exactly classy, I'll admit, but it was also meant in jest. Maybe that wasn't obvious enough.
I don't know where you're coming from with your brief tirade against morons on the Internet. All I really said was that I don't see why I should be interested in this guy's opinion that online multiplayer gaming is overrated. I think Starbucks Carmel Macchiatos are nasty and I'd wager that the majority of Americans agree. Should I publish an editorial about this?
Well, maybe I should. Certainly there's no harm in it, just as there's no harm in this guy's publishing a discussion piece about his opinion. Likewise, there's no harm in my posting that I don't find his arguments compelling. Furthermore, criticizing my statements because I didn't temper them in anticipation of disagreement is kind of a silly thing to say -- I speak for myself and myself only. If anyone else wants to raise their voice in dissent, I'm sure they will (as you've done).
Sometimes "everything is fine" is the simple truth. I wouldn't actually argue (and, in fact, have not argued) that there's nothing that can be improved about online multiplayer gaming. However, that doesn't mean I agree that it's "overrated."
No, I'm pretty sure I do understand what the article was getting at. The author thinks online multiplayer is overrated. Great. He has his reasons, but I don't find any of them to be as compelling as you seem to. No, not every player is going to be interested in online gaming. Fine, great. But there are thousands upon thousands who are. The article struck me as a fluff piece based on whatever rationale this guy could come up with one day. And, as an editorial, that's fine, but I don't really see any reason to give particular weight to his opinion on the matter.
As for griefers, cheaters, and skill-level matching, these are problems with online games, sure. They're frustrating at times, but in my experience it's still possible to find a decent game most of the time. Ranking systems help with the skill level matching, so in the games I've played at least, really it's just the asshats that bring things down. I don't see either of these as damning flaws that can't be overcome.
Oh, and thanks for calling me a moron, it really added a touch of class to your post.