gas? why bother? use colored talc. i like yellow best. powdery stuff will scare people just as much. but i think i agree that gas would look better -- no risk of clumping, etc.
a small fleet of such airplanes would, yes, probably wreak havoc in a city.
and likely get people hurt and/or killed. and you jailed. i think this falls under the same category as 'shouting "fire" in a crowded room'.
a) rdbms theory does not preclude nested transactions. in fact, CJ Date & H Darwen seem to rather think it should be part of the the requirement for a rdbms. current products don't all support nested transactions, but some do.
b) you don't want this anyway. a trade is a contract, and like contracts usually are, undoable only if both parties agree to do so. in the case of trades like these, with a domino effect, the top-level traders who want to undo their trade (or at least one side does) need to ask the permission of everyone affected. that could be thousands, millions of people only a few minutes later. (especially in a case like this, where people pounce on a good deal.)
not all decisions made based on the stock market stay in the stock market. while you would possibly undo all trades 'based' on the bad trade, you'd miss all the indirect dependencies within the stock market, as well as the business decisions made outside the stock market: deciding you can afford to buy something you wouldn't have otherwise, etc.
i would personally ask for absolutely -no- ability to undo transactions of this sort automatically. no trades should be undone, regardless of how 'wrong' they seem, unless everyone involved agrees. if you sold lower than you meant to, and someone buys... they're not likely to agree. and that's just too bad.
if a computer glitch resulted in an incorrectly posted price, then the computer systems and their maintainers should be responsible, but the trades should continue without interruption. they provide a service, they failed to provide it correctly, and no remedy would be complete enough if done strictly by modification of the stock market. it's a case where they can't remedy their mistake by undoing it -- only by reimbursing the harmed parties.
however, the -value- of the mistake is complicated. it's a time-based systems, with humans making decisions. can they prove what the price should have been, or how many people would have traded at that price? it's difficult to prove how much loss was incurred. that's a very judge/court-oriented thing to decide.
that's not quite enough. a correlation can usually be found between other factors, such as income, ethnicity, or how close the area is to certain types of business... and party registration.
they don't need to know who you plan to vote for to draw lines to their benefit.
the system itself, of using districts to 'bottleneck' the voting process causes this flaw. you could have a dozen areas, and overal a balanced voting population, and still wind up with a slight discrepency that puts more than 50% of the votes for A in one district, and have all the others be just below 50%. you'd wind up with 11/12 seats being B, and only 1 A. even though the population itself was evenly distributed, and the lines were almost perfectly "fair".
of course copyright is unnatural. of course it's unfair of them to take away the ability to make use of fair use under certain circumstances (or even all of them.) yeah, it sucks.
but then, we might also consider it unnatural of a government to restrict hunting to preserve a species... i wanted to hunt it and kill it, dang it, and up until now i could. so, should i -demand- that they give me something in exchange, to keep me from hunting? i can demand all i like, but if they don't give me anything in exchange... that in no way makes it more 'right' for me to go ahead with hunting. or copying music in ways that were legal up until recently. the same applies, by the way, to drugs. up until late this century, most drugs were quite legal (in the sense that they weren't controlled substances at all)... did the government give us anything in exchange for taking away our right to use them? no? so does that make their laws illegal? unfair? naughty?
governments oppress. don't expect them to oppress fairly. that's not their job.
i believe the generally accepted incentives are -staying out of jail -not getting fined to a pulp -not having the businesses that create content go out of business*
we're spoiled brats when we expect those in authority to -give- us something to make up for us not doing some bad. extortion? "i won't tell mom where you went for $5"... "i won't kill my neighbor for $5 million"...
dude, no.
*yes, i know, they talk about that all the time and are still in business. that's because they still get some business. just like someone who only gets robbed every -other- day still has stuff. that doesn't make it right, and we know it.
As to aliens: without proof that they exist, he refuses to care. After all, without the indians/natives, who would have cared that europeans were invading a new continent? Therefore, he'll care when aliens actually complain that they owned it first. And then, he'll fight them. So he says.
As to his claim: he has declared that the UN treaty banning governments from laying claim to land in space only applies to governments, and that it has no bearing on individuals. The government's right to do anything comes from citizens, so this is the 'correct' order of things.
As to not laying foot on it: anything not already owned is deemed to be up for grabs to the first to think of it. A registry has been set up to allow people to state their claim against stars, planets, and other bodies floating in space. Our sun is already claimed, and I seem to remember there being a story about an exchange between the owner of the moon (or was it eros?) and that of the sun -- a bill was sent for the energy used, owner of the other body responded he didn't like the service and wanted it discontinued... since this couldn't be done, the bill was cancelled.
Effectively, these people believe that their claim to these new territories is founded purely and simply in the lack of laws preventing it. Brute force will be required, they think, to say otherwise -- and they're already planning a galactic-level government (in the same shape as the UN) to help legitimize their claims and instruct counter-claims (and enforce their prior ownership, apparently.) Earth is outside its scope, for lack of proper representation. Everyone else is welcome to join, if they're a non-earth land (or gas?) owner.
Arguments will boil down to "but nothing says I can't, so, ha!" And that's where we ended the thread.
isn't that information already required to be public?
however, i know from my own county (middle of nowhere colorado) that the maps are seldomly updated in digital format -- my girlfriend (IT manager for the county) was updating 20-year-old maps, putting the incremental changes back into the database. they were planning on printing new maps for surveyors, etc., and hadn't done it recently (20 years.) although the information is publicly available (and the paper maps are up to date,) there's no guarantee it's available digitally, or digitally & correctly. then again, most of this information was about property ownership and boundaries -- maybe they keep the road information more up to date. (i highly doubt it.) i know the city disagrees with the sign on my street about where i live, exactly -- someone driving around would find information that doesn't match information given by the city/county, but might be more useful to help you navigate. (the UPS/Fedex people get a bit confused when you give them one address and they have the other one available to them in their mapping system.)
from what i understand, information of this sort is kept using fairly standard software like ESRI ArcGIS (unless it's just in the "road guy"'s head, as it is for us most of the time,) so most counties would have very similar (or identical) database layouts. shouldn't be too hard to coordinate. getting them to -send- you updates might take some convincing though, or even to make the updates digital.
but then, we have, what, less than a dozen paved roads in the county? =)
it won't. revolutions are terrorism nowadays, didn't you get the memo? any armed action -not- planned by world leaders is obviously wrong and in need of extermination. don't hold your breath, we're gonna keep ourselves under our own oppression.
Uhm, I probably shouldn't encourage you by replying, but would you mind taking a second to think about this?
Socialism is about having the government redistribute money from taxes to a bit of everyone for services they could theoretically provide to themselves. (Yes, you could, I suppose, get your own militia and do without the military, but that's less likely than paying for your own healthcare.)
Any government, by its very nature, is going to make decisions like the one you're unhappy with. That's why we have voting -- so we can make it clear that a lot of us aren't happy, but don't get our way. Really -- look at our last presidential elections. Half of us were happy with the result, half unhappy. That's not great. Is it the fault of socialism? No.
If you don't like decisions like this one, you probably shouldn't like any form of government at all. Anarchy is interesting, and you probably wouldn't even care about voting machines. Anarchy, however, is likely to lead to small groups of people forming their own governments, eventually leading back to bigger governments, for the sake of security, simplicity, and... well, their parents did it too, right? Can a lack of government enforce the no-government rule? Better get those torches ready, you're gonna need 'em.
As a reminder, there is no government. There are people, serving other people, elected to best represent (as they can) the wishes of the majority. A court said 'no' to a lawsuit presented by one member of the population -- that means that, most likely, the rest of the population disagreed with him. Darn. That's not socialism, that's a process that occurs even in anarchism: people can beat you up if they disagree with you, and there's nothing you can do about it....
Now that I look at your other posts, I see you sometimes are against most any form of government. Good. Now be consistent about it -- don't blame socialism, or anything else, when it's just the fault of the basic governmental process.
nono... why build a special protocol? just make it auto-establish a tcp link with a private ip, and offer services the way you normally would, by attaching services to port numbers... and use all the normal tools and existing protocols. and no xml. you want to use the bandwidth, not flood it with metadata. sheesh. poor little phone...
Internet Week describes some of the goals: avoiding viruses, worms, and 'building apps that are as smart as Outlook.'
Nono, you missed it. The goal is to -avoid- building apps that are as smart as outlook. See? All better. Otherwise, the grammar would indicate that 'worms' are a goal in and of themselves. And I sure as hell hope they're not.
a note on properties: Borland Builder defines 'property' to be a new keyword for (their) c++. you can replace it with a few dozen (at most) lines of c++ code, using templates, in normal c++. it's only more trouble because you get to associate the property with get/set functions yourself in the constructor, or define your own macros. properties are neat and interesting and a lot of programmers just don't understand them ("but it's just a public variable!") when all they've seen is a get/set system.
the more interesting addition Borland Builder made to c++ keywords was 'closure' -- i have yet to find a good way to emulate that with an object in normal c++, as you would (as i see it) want a way to make a function object that is templatable with an unknown number of template classes, so you can say that the function being called takes -these- params, and returns -that-, without deriving a new function object for every combination of parameter types used in your program.
object_pointer->*function_pointer(parameter_lis t)... is fine, but it's a pain to pass the two pointers around and have to, in your code, re-associate them into that statement, rather than:
my_closure(parameter_list);
any ideas from people who have felt the need to do this more strongly than i have?
and am i the only one to worry that anonymous code with access to local variables is a slight danger to encapsulation? i didn't see in the spec anything saying that a class's privates would remain hidden from code sent to it as an anonymous function, the way you'd expect having done that with named functions (where the parameter list really restricts what it sees.)
and most of the time, C++ will help you with null pointers by letting you use references instead. does the same job, but it's much more of a pain to confuse it into passing a null pointer when it shouldn't. useful buggers, references are.
and with C++, there's no garbage collector to do freaky things. either you destroy it or scope destroys it or you have a memory leak, but it's not much of a puzzle.
i like some of the features of C#, and might not mind them being added to C++... i've liked the -concept- of anonymous functions, both in python and lisp. but what worries me is that they say these have access to local variables in the class using the anonymous function the way it could a callback or closure (by pointer)... there's a possible violation of encapsulation that leaves me feeling a bit ill. and besides -- anonymous functions are only useful for throwaway uses. if you're going to do it several times, better to name it. at least you'll only have one place to fix it. i get the feeling people want them because they screw up callbacks too much (granted, the syntax, especially for closures, is nasty in C++... and passing closures around without a language construct like borland builder's closure keyword makes it even worse. but that's what function objects are for!)
generics have been around in C++ for a while, eh? and although C#'s requirements thing sounds interesting, shouldn't the compiler be catching those as part of strict-type checking anyway?
[somehow, this reminds me that C++, spec-wise, allows you to explicitely tell the compiler what you're likely to throw(), the way java does... i believe MS VC 6 never got around to supporting that?]
interesting functionality being added. but not necessary, and likely to get people using "cool toys" rather than programming carefully. that's just me.
Alternet had a story about independent media centers just a few weeks ago. As the autor puts it, Indymedia journalists generally believe everyone is biased, hiding it, and that we might as well just be as opinionated in written form as we would be among friends. It goes into the history of the "democratic" (I think "open" is a much better word) system, their decentralized nature, and the tough decisions they've had to make.
I don't think it was in this article, but the comment is easily made that two biased viewpoints next to each other don't make up a fair, objective statement. If you assume, however, that everyone is out to convince you of something at least partially untrue, then this is as good as it gets (sadly.)
I fail to understand, however, why sites like this are mostly liberal-oriented. Is it a culture thing, or a reputation thing? Would unlike-minded individuals just never be caught posting here? Is it a bit like pro-microsoft articles and slashdot?
Independent media is a tool, not a solution. If everyone were to use the tool, it might actually be more useful. It would also have so much "information" flowing through it that we would be unlikely to pick out the good parts. Any selection or editorial process is likely to be biased... it all comes down to the readers checking their facts, with any source.
Your mileage will most likely vary quite thoroughly.
i've considered using this system for something like an indymedia system -- never make people log in or provide you with any form of identification, but print out some sort of hash/secret number that allows them to have control over the content they uploaded. normally, a username/password would give them access, but that would require identification, track all items as a set (he uploaded this -and- that, therefore?) and is just a pain.
for voting, we'd have to decide the following: (in the db, we store a hash of the generated password + vote)
do we print out: a) just the secret number b) secret number + vote in each of the following cases: a) for audit trail b) for the voter to walk away with
regardless, the problem brought up by CTHO9305 exists: until you destroy your piece of paper, someone could look up your vote. but at least you have the option to do so -- by destroying that paper (and maybe just remembering the number?) you destroy the only link between yourself and the vote recorded.
but if you find fraud, how do you prove it? you'd need the paper to have both your number -and- your vote, to show that what was recorded was false (in case, for example, the audit-trail paper misteriously disappeared.) sure, it'd cause havoc. but then, if the election is rigged, don't you -want- thousands of people holding pieces of paper coming to demand that you fix the count?
regardless, there's always a risk somewhere. but maybe we can make it difficult for them. and have a reason to be pissed. and you wouldn't want to forget which way you voted, now would you?
wow. such a dangerous precedent. indeed, goodness knows what would happen if, say, groups of people created laws which prevent you from acting on your belief that every last bird on the planet should be dead. what a tragedy. what would we do? oh, wait, we'd ignore you.
we can't go around sulking, nor turning everyone into a martyr. did they do it for religious reasons? i don't know, maybe they didn't like the way he tied his shoelaces or perhaps -gasp- he wears velcro shoes. will we hear no end from proponents of velcro shoes? how -their- scientist was excluded from getting the Nobel prize, vindicating their paranoid feelings of exclusion in general?
or do you take everything as a form of 'ad hominem'? is it impossible, in your view, for anyone to judge the merits of a discovery (in this case, application more than discovery) purely on the science, fairly, without examining the personal beliefs of the scientist? do you judge people this way in your day-to-day life? do you feel blame everything on something other than merit? "i didn't get promoted because i flirt with the secretary too much" rather than "i didn't get promoted because i screwed up the backup tape"?
they're not accountable to us anyway. as said other places: if you get the money to start distributing prizes, you get to write the rules and play by them. until then... write something worth reading or do something worth writing. and take it like a man. or woman.
I have a pack of Waterman pens (currently the thin silver kind) I brought back from France -- not too much trouble with leaking. They'll work during flight, but you're right, you may wind up with a slight bit of ink on the tip. It's much more damaging, however, to let them dry. Regardless, several of the ink packs I bought come with the transparent cleaning "ink", and hot water works beautifully (though it takes a few minutes) for really cleaning a pen out. I've never had a Waterman tip break on me, though I have had problems with other brands. Pressure differences haven't ruined any of the pens -- the worst damage was a bit of a leak, through all the normal places (it's to be expected -- fountain pens are designed to react to capillary forces) which is easily cleaned.
I keep extras around for friends -- when bought in France, they cost me somewhere less than $10 per pen, and in the same price range for large packs of ink. (Extra pack of black for the sysadmin, extra pack of red for the accountant...) Buying any fountain pens or ink in the USA is outright expensive for no good reason. Fountain pens are a working tool in Europe, even the fancy ones, and are sold at much lower cost. Here, they're seen as specialty, classy, trendy items to be given at birthdays.
Don't forget about erasable ink -- Reynolds erasers work nicely -- and don't forget to buy ink that matches the eraser you use (chemically matched.) Most often, only the specially-designed blue ink is erasable, and only erasable once (the erasing liquid will erase, or at least wash out, any new ink added later.) I've had a few bad experiences with erasable ink re-appearing ten or fifteen years later: I discovered this when packing up my childhood school stuff (that my mom kept around) and looking through it -- corrected mistakes were starting to re-appear in an odd yellow-green color.
I recommend you not ever use a fountain pen on normal american paper -- college-rule or otherwise. It's simply too thin and too scratchy: your writing will look messy, crooked, and show through to the back side. Printer paper -can- be acceptable, if it's weighty. European papers are generally stouter for this purpose, buy the heaviest you are willing to afford. (And it's prettier paper too!)
Having taken notes in class for ten years with these pens (including college Civ class,) I can attest to their comfiness and speed.
Agreed. Firebird (here) and PostgreSQL(here) both do. And it works. InnoDB in mysql tries really hard, but it's behind, and it slows down MySQL (compared to ISAM/VSAM) enough you might as well use another database that, at the same speed, has more features.
If we do show that we can legally transfer 'ownership' (in this case, licenses) around... what's to keep us from setting up an automated system? I want song "X" -- go find me a license, pay up to $1.00 for it. Tell me when it's done. When you're tired of listening for it, put the license up, get paid for it.
It wouldn't take very many copies of a given set of bits before everyone would have legal access to the stuff, within a short time period. I know that I, personally, don't listen to my music all the time... and if my stuff is out (sold) and I can rather easily buy back someone else's copy, automatically... I don't think I'll miss it.
That creates a simple cash-flow problem for someone like iTunes -- after a few sales, people stop buying.
'Course, if we recycled and constantly traded everything that we own physically, the same problem might occur. Only consumables like gasoline or food would be, effectively, non-transferrable once used. For the content industry to remedy this, they'd have to make their stuff a consumable, one-use only item. You'd no longer buy a license to listen to the song whenever you like (on a given number of computers, etc.) but to listen to it N times. I seem to remember a business similar to this dying rather quickly... something about DVD rentals... ?
indeed -- my website has an oft-updated tensor-based graph that it displays at the bottom of each "node" (database-driven template thingie)... the graph's starting to get a bit nasty to look at. i used a fish-eye system to try to make the middle clearer (and still see edges) but over time, it's just going to get messy. for an example, see
and look at the bottom. it ain't gonna be usable for long.
and ignore the front page -- i haven't figured out how to tell apache that i want the folder visible (default file accessible) but want to specify which file types (by regex) to allow, rather than which -not- to allow. grrr. if anyone has tips on -that- on, i'd love to know. (before i resort to moving all sensitive files into a sub-dir that i lock down.)
it's bad enough that some distributions of linux leave sun-rpc open by default. last time i forgot to turn it off, didn't take long before someone on the local cable loop started having some automated fun (damn windows script-kiddie)... linux distributions are normally better about this, and their built-in firewalling is much better than windows'... but i wish they all came with stuff -off- by default, and told you -why- you would want to turn each port on, what the known bugs are, and immediately let you configure where you want stuff to be accessible from. but that's just me.
Slashdot Mirror
gas? why bother? use colored talc. i like yellow best. powdery stuff will scare people just as much. but i think i agree that gas would look better -- no risk of clumping, etc.
a small fleet of such airplanes would, yes, probably wreak havoc in a city.
and likely get people hurt and/or killed. and you jailed. i think this falls under the same category as 'shouting "fire" in a crowded room'.
a) rdbms theory does not preclude nested transactions. in fact, CJ Date & H Darwen seem to rather think it should be part of the the requirement for a rdbms. current products don't all support nested transactions, but some do.
... they're not likely to agree. and that's just too bad.
b) you don't want this anyway. a trade is a contract, and like contracts usually are, undoable only if both parties agree to do so. in the case of trades like these, with a domino effect, the top-level traders who want to undo their trade (or at least one side does) need to ask the permission of everyone affected. that could be thousands, millions of people only a few minutes later. (especially in a case like this, where people pounce on a good deal.)
not all decisions made based on the stock market stay in the stock market. while you would possibly undo all trades 'based' on the bad trade, you'd miss all the indirect dependencies within the stock market, as well as the business decisions made outside the stock market: deciding you can afford to buy something you wouldn't have otherwise, etc.
i would personally ask for absolutely -no- ability to undo transactions of this sort automatically. no trades should be undone, regardless of how 'wrong' they seem, unless everyone involved agrees. if you sold lower than you meant to, and someone buys
if a computer glitch resulted in an incorrectly posted price, then the computer systems and their maintainers should be responsible, but the trades should continue without interruption. they provide a service, they failed to provide it correctly, and no remedy would be complete enough if done strictly by modification of the stock market. it's a case where they can't remedy their mistake by undoing it -- only by reimbursing the harmed parties.
however, the -value- of the mistake is complicated. it's a time-based systems, with humans making decisions. can they prove what the price should have been, or how many people would have traded at that price? it's difficult to prove how much loss was incurred. that's a very judge/court-oriented thing to decide.
that's not quite enough. a correlation can usually be found between other factors, such as income, ethnicity, or how close the area is to certain types of business ... and party registration.
they don't need to know who you plan to vote for to draw lines to their benefit.
the system itself, of using districts to 'bottleneck' the voting process causes this flaw. you could have a dozen areas, and overal a balanced voting population, and still wind up with a slight discrepency that puts more than 50% of the votes for A in one district, and have all the others be just below 50%. you'd wind up with 11/12 seats being B, and only 1 A. even though the population itself was evenly distributed, and the lines were almost perfectly "fair".
of course copyright is unnatural. of course it's unfair of them to take away the ability to make use of fair use under certain circumstances (or even all of them.) yeah, it sucks.
... i wanted to hunt it and kill it, dang it, and up until now i could. so, should i -demand- that they give me something in exchange, to keep me from hunting? i can demand all i like, but if they don't give me anything in exchange ... that in no way makes it more 'right' for me to go ahead with hunting. or copying music in ways that were legal up until recently. the same applies, by the way, to drugs. up until late this century, most drugs were quite legal (in the sense that they weren't controlled substances at all) ... did the government give us anything in exchange for taking away our right to use them? no? so does that make their laws illegal? unfair? naughty?
but then, we might also consider it unnatural of a government to restrict hunting to preserve a species
governments oppress. don't expect them to oppress fairly. that's not their job.
i believe the generally accepted incentives are
... "i won't kill my neighbor for $5 million" ...
-staying out of jail
-not getting fined to a pulp
-not having the businesses that create content go out of business*
we're spoiled brats when we expect those in authority to -give- us something to make up for us not doing some bad. extortion? "i won't tell mom where you went for $5"
dude, no.
*yes, i know, they talk about that all the time and are still in business. that's because they still get some business. just like someone who only gets robbed every -other- day still has stuff. that doesn't make it right, and we know it.
I've already had dealings with Mr. Nemitz ...
... since this couldn't be done, the bill was cancelled.
As to aliens: without proof that they exist, he refuses to care. After all, without the indians/natives, who would have cared that europeans were invading a new continent? Therefore, he'll care when aliens actually complain that they owned it first. And then, he'll fight them. So he says.
As to his claim: he has declared that the UN treaty banning governments from laying claim to land in space only applies to governments, and that it has no bearing on individuals. The government's right to do anything comes from citizens, so this is the 'correct' order of things.
As to not laying foot on it: anything not already owned is deemed to be up for grabs to the first to think of it. A registry has been set up to allow people to state their claim against stars, planets, and other bodies floating in space. Our sun is already claimed, and I seem to remember there being a story about an exchange between the owner of the moon (or was it eros?) and that of the sun -- a bill was sent for the energy used, owner of the other body responded he didn't like the service and wanted it discontinued
Effectively, these people believe that their claim to these new territories is founded purely and simply in the lack of laws preventing it. Brute force will be required, they think, to say otherwise -- and they're already planning a galactic-level government (in the same shape as the UN) to help legitimize their claims and instruct counter-claims (and enforce their prior ownership, apparently.) Earth is outside its scope, for lack of proper representation. Everyone else is welcome to join, if they're a non-earth land (or gas?) owner.
Arguments will boil down to "but nothing says I can't, so, ha!" And that's where we ended the thread.
isn't that information already required to be public?
however, i know from my own county (middle of nowhere colorado) that the maps are seldomly updated in digital format -- my girlfriend (IT manager for the county) was updating 20-year-old maps, putting the incremental changes back into the database. they were planning on printing new maps for surveyors, etc., and hadn't done it recently (20 years.) although the information is publicly available (and the paper maps are up to date,) there's no guarantee it's available digitally, or digitally & correctly. then again, most of this information was about property ownership and boundaries -- maybe they keep the road information more up to date. (i highly doubt it.) i know
the city disagrees with the sign on my street about where i live, exactly -- someone driving around would find information that doesn't match information given by the city/county, but might be more useful to help you navigate. (the UPS/Fedex people get a bit confused when you give them one address and they have the other one available to them in their mapping system.)
from what i understand, information of this sort is kept using fairly standard software like ESRI ArcGIS (unless it's just in the "road guy"'s head, as it is for us most of the time,) so most counties would have very similar (or identical) database layouts. shouldn't be too hard to coordinate. getting them to -send- you updates might take some convincing though, or even to make the updates digital.
but then, we have, what, less than a dozen paved roads in the county? =)
... and I'm not your friend.
it won't. revolutions are terrorism nowadays, didn't you get the memo? any armed action -not- planned by world leaders is obviously wrong and in need of extermination. don't hold your breath, we're gonna keep ourselves under our own oppression.
we do it to ourselves.
Uhm, I probably shouldn't encourage you by replying, but would you mind taking a second to think about this?
... well, their parents did it too, right? Can a lack of government enforce the no-government rule? Better get those torches ready, you're gonna need 'em.
...
Socialism is about having the government redistribute money from taxes to a bit of everyone for services they could theoretically provide to themselves. (Yes, you could, I suppose, get your own militia and do without the military, but that's less likely than paying for your own healthcare.)
Any government, by its very nature, is going to make decisions like the one you're unhappy with. That's why we have voting -- so we can make it clear that a lot of us aren't happy, but don't get our way. Really -- look at our last presidential elections. Half of us were happy with the result, half unhappy. That's not great. Is it the fault of socialism? No.
If you don't like decisions like this one, you probably shouldn't like any form of government at all. Anarchy is interesting, and you probably wouldn't even care about voting machines. Anarchy, however, is likely to lead to small groups of people forming their own governments, eventually leading back to bigger governments, for the sake of security, simplicity, and
As a reminder, there is no government. There are people, serving other people, elected to best represent (as they can) the wishes of the majority. A court said 'no' to a lawsuit presented by one member of the population -- that means that, most likely, the rest of the population disagreed with him. Darn. That's not socialism, that's a process that occurs even in anarchism: people can beat you up if they disagree with you, and there's nothing you can do about it.
Now that I look at your other posts, I see you sometimes are against most any form of government. Good. Now be consistent about it -- don't blame socialism, or anything else, when it's just the fault of the basic governmental process.
nono ... why build a special protocol? just make it auto-establish a tcp link with a private ip, and offer services the way you normally would, by attaching services to port numbers ... and use all the normal tools and existing protocols. and no xml. you want to use the bandwidth, not flood it with metadata. sheesh. poor little phone ...
"Will I dream?"
Internet Week describes some of the goals: avoiding viruses, worms, and 'building apps that are as smart as Outlook.'
Nono, you missed it. The goal is to -avoid- building apps that are as smart as outlook. See? All better. Otherwise, the grammar would indicate that 'worms' are a goal in and of themselves. And I sure as hell hope they're not.
a note on properties: Borland Builder defines 'property' to be a new keyword for (their) c++. you can replace it with a few dozen (at most) lines of c++ code, using templates, in normal c++. it's only more trouble because you get to associate the property with get/set functions yourself in the constructor, or define your own macros. properties are neat and interesting and a lot of programmers just don't understand them ("but it's just a public variable!") when all they've seen is a get/set system.
... is fine, but it's a pain to pass the two pointers around and have to, in your code, re-associate them into that statement, rather than:
the more interesting addition Borland Builder made to c++ keywords was 'closure' -- i have yet to find a good way to emulate that with an object in normal c++, as you would (as i see it) want a way to make a function object that is templatable with an unknown number of template classes, so you can say that the function being called takes -these- params, and returns -that-, without deriving a new function object for every combination of parameter types used in your program.
object_pointer->*function_pointer(parameter_lis t)
my_closure(parameter_list);
any ideas from people who have felt the need to do this more strongly than i have?
and am i the only one to worry that anonymous code with access to local variables is a slight danger to encapsulation? i didn't see in the spec anything saying that a class's privates would remain hidden from code sent to it as an anonymous function, the way you'd expect having done that with named functions (where the parameter list really restricts what it sees.)
and most of the time, C++ will help you with null pointers by letting you use references instead. does the same job, but it's much more of a pain to confuse it into passing a null pointer when it shouldn't. useful buggers, references are.
... i've liked the -concept- of anonymous functions, both in python and lisp. but what worries me is that they say these have access to local variables in the class using the anonymous function the way it could a callback or closure (by pointer) ... there's a possible violation of encapsulation that leaves me feeling a bit ill. and besides -- anonymous functions are only useful for throwaway uses. if you're going to do it several times, better to name it. at least you'll only have one place to fix it. i get the feeling people want them because they screw up callbacks too much (granted, the syntax, especially for closures, is nasty in C++ ... and passing closures around without a language construct like borland builder's closure keyword makes it even worse. but that's what function objects are for!)
... i believe MS VC 6 never got around to supporting that?]
and with C++, there's no garbage collector to do freaky things. either you destroy it or scope destroys it or you have a memory leak, but it's not much of a puzzle.
i like some of the features of C#, and might not mind them being added to C++
generics have been around in C++ for a while, eh? and although C#'s requirements thing sounds interesting, shouldn't the compiler be catching those as part of strict-type checking anyway?
[somehow, this reminds me that C++, spec-wise, allows you to explicitely tell the compiler what you're likely to throw(), the way java does
interesting functionality being added. but not necessary, and likely to get people using "cool toys" rather than programming carefully. that's just me.
Voltaire? Might check. Quotes are easily mis-attributed. (Yes, my site probably has a few too. I'd love to know.)
Alternet had a story about independent media centers just a few weeks ago. As the autor puts it, Indymedia journalists generally believe everyone is biased, hiding it, and that we might as well just be as opinionated in written form as we would be among friends. It goes into the history of the "democratic" (I think "open" is a much better word) system, their decentralized nature, and the tough decisions they've had to make.
... it all comes down to the readers checking their facts, with any source.
Indymedia: Between Passion and Pragmatism by Gal Beckerman, Columbia Journalism Review, September 17, 2003.
I don't think it was in this article, but the comment is easily made that two biased viewpoints next to each other don't make up a fair, objective statement. If you assume, however, that everyone is out to convince you of something at least partially untrue, then this is as good as it gets (sadly.)
I fail to understand, however, why sites like this are mostly liberal-oriented. Is it a culture thing, or a reputation thing? Would unlike-minded individuals just never be caught posting here? Is it a bit like pro-microsoft articles and slashdot?
Independent media is a tool, not a solution. If everyone were to use the tool, it might actually be more useful. It would also have so much "information" flowing through it that we would be unlikely to pick out the good parts. Any selection or editorial process is likely to be biased
Your mileage will most likely vary quite thoroughly.
i've considered using this system for something like an indymedia system -- never make people log in or provide you with any form of identification, but print out some sort of hash/secret number that allows them to have control over the content they uploaded. normally, a username/password would give them access, but that would require identification, track all items as a set (he uploaded this -and- that, therefore?) and is just a pain.
for voting, we'd have to decide the following:
(in the db, we store a hash of the generated password + vote)
do we print out:
a) just the secret number
b) secret number + vote
in each of the following cases:
a) for audit trail
b) for the voter to walk away with
regardless, the problem brought up by CTHO9305 exists: until you destroy your piece of paper, someone could look up your vote. but at least you have the option to do so -- by destroying that paper (and maybe just remembering the number?) you destroy the only link between yourself and the vote recorded.
but if you find fraud, how do you prove it? you'd need the paper to have both your number -and- your vote, to show that what was recorded was false (in case, for example, the audit-trail paper misteriously disappeared.) sure, it'd cause havoc. but then, if the election is rigged, don't you -want- thousands of people holding pieces of paper coming to demand that you fix the count?
regardless, there's always a risk somewhere. but maybe we can make it difficult for them. and have a reason to be pissed. and you wouldn't want to forget which way you voted, now would you?
wow. such a dangerous precedent. indeed, goodness knows what would happen if, say, groups of people created laws which prevent you from acting on your belief that every last bird on the planet should be dead. what a tragedy. what would we do? oh, wait, we'd ignore you.
... write something worth reading or do something worth writing. and take it like a man. or woman.
we can't go around sulking, nor turning everyone into a martyr. did they do it for religious reasons? i don't know, maybe they didn't like the way he tied his shoelaces or perhaps -gasp- he wears velcro shoes. will we hear no end from proponents of velcro shoes? how -their- scientist was excluded from getting the Nobel prize, vindicating their paranoid feelings of exclusion in general?
or do you take everything as a form of 'ad hominem'? is it impossible, in your view, for anyone to judge the merits of a discovery (in this case, application more than discovery) purely on the science, fairly, without examining the personal beliefs of the scientist? do you judge people this way in your day-to-day life? do you feel blame everything on something other than merit? "i didn't get promoted because i flirt with the secretary too much" rather than "i didn't get promoted because i screwed up the backup tape"?
they're not accountable to us anyway. as said other places: if you get the money to start distributing prizes, you get to write the rules and play by them. until then
I have a pack of Waterman pens (currently the thin silver kind) I brought back from France -- not too much trouble with leaking. They'll work during flight, but you're right, you may wind up with a slight bit of ink on the tip. It's much more damaging, however, to let them dry. Regardless, several of the ink packs I bought come with the transparent cleaning "ink", and hot water works beautifully (though it takes a few minutes) for really cleaning a pen out. I've never had a Waterman tip break on me, though I have had problems with other brands. Pressure differences haven't ruined any of the pens -- the worst damage was a bit of a leak, through all the normal places (it's to be expected -- fountain pens are designed to react to capillary forces) which is easily cleaned.
...) Buying any fountain pens or ink in the USA is outright expensive for no good reason. Fountain pens are a working tool in Europe, even the fancy ones, and are sold at much lower cost. Here, they're seen as specialty, classy, trendy items to be given at birthdays.
I keep extras around for friends -- when bought in France, they cost me somewhere less than $10 per pen, and in the same price range for large packs of ink. (Extra pack of black for the sysadmin, extra pack of red for the accountant
Don't forget about erasable ink -- Reynolds erasers work nicely -- and don't forget to buy ink that matches the eraser you use (chemically matched.) Most often, only the specially-designed blue ink is erasable, and only erasable once (the erasing liquid will erase, or at least wash out, any new ink added later.) I've had a few bad experiences with erasable ink re-appearing ten or fifteen years later: I discovered this when packing up my childhood school stuff (that my mom kept around) and looking through it -- corrected mistakes were starting to re-appear in an odd yellow-green color.
I recommend you not ever use a fountain pen on normal american paper -- college-rule or otherwise. It's simply too thin and too scratchy: your writing will look messy, crooked, and show through to the back side. Printer paper -can- be acceptable, if it's weighty. European papers are generally stouter for this purpose, buy the heaviest you are willing to afford. (And it's prettier paper too!)
Having taken notes in class for ten years with these pens (including college Civ class,) I can attest to their comfiness and speed.
But yeah, it'll get you weird looks.
uhm, don't give them any ideas -- they have nukes now too, and they might have a problem with flies. they might be tempted ...
Agreed. Firebird (here) and PostgreSQL(here) both do. And it works. InnoDB in mysql tries really hard, but it's behind, and it slows down MySQL (compared to ISAM/VSAM) enough you might as well use another database that, at the same speed, has more features.
If we do show that we can legally transfer 'ownership' (in this case, licenses) around ... what's to keep us from setting up an automated system? I want song "X" -- go find me a license, pay up to $1.00 for it. Tell me when it's done. When you're tired of listening for it, put the license up, get paid for it.
... and if my stuff is out (sold) and I can rather easily buy back someone else's copy, automatically ... I don't think I'll miss it.
... something about DVD rentals ... ?
It wouldn't take very many copies of a given set of bits before everyone would have legal access to the stuff, within a short time period. I know that I, personally, don't listen to my music all the time
That creates a simple cash-flow problem for someone like iTunes -- after a few sales, people stop buying.
'Course, if we recycled and constantly traded everything that we own physically, the same problem might occur. Only consumables like gasoline or food would be, effectively, non-transferrable once used. For the content industry to remedy this, they'd have to make their stuff a consumable, one-use only item. You'd no longer buy a license to listen to the song whenever you like (on a given number of computers, etc.) but to listen to it N times. I seem to remember a business similar to this dying rather quickly
indeed -- my website has an oft-updated tensor-based graph that it displays at the bottom of each "node" (database-driven template thingie) ... the graph's starting to get a bit nasty to look at. i used a fish-eye system to try to make the middle clearer (and still see edges) but over time, it's just going to get messy. for an example, see
c t_ id=589
http://www.pseudotheos.com/view_object.php?obje
and look at the bottom. it ain't gonna be usable for long.
and ignore the front page -- i haven't figured out how to tell apache that i want the folder visible (default file accessible) but want to specify which file types (by regex) to allow, rather than which -not- to allow. grrr. if anyone has tips on -that- on, i'd love to know. (before i resort to moving all sensitive files into a sub-dir that i lock down.)
it's bad enough that some distributions of linux leave sun-rpc open by default. last time i forgot to turn it off, didn't take long before someone on the local cable loop started having some automated fun (damn windows script-kiddie) ... linux distributions are normally better about this, and their built-in firewalling is much better than windows' ... but i wish they all came with stuff -off- by default, and told you -why- you would want to turn each port on, what the known bugs are, and immediately let you configure where you want stuff to be accessible from. but that's just me.