> Facebook's value is the number of people signed up to it.
True
> Facebook will remain dominant simply by having the users to create enough content to be interesting. No upstart can beat that...
Myspace was THE social networking site. Then Facebook challenged Myspace, then beat them. Network effects are.powerful, but not insurmountable.
One of the the more likely scenarios for something else to beat out Facebook is if they start in a very specific niche, such as DoctorNet, or CopBook . The service would be tailored to doctors, but could offer all the same features as Facebook. Once DoctorNet is strong among doctors, they'd add NurseNet, then RxNet, etc, growing their own network effects within a specific community and extending outward until they could challenge Facebook in general. Language specific networks could be another avenue. If a company had a strong presence in German, and Dutch, perhaps, they could add languages and cultures, then carefully interweave the different networks to create a super-network that retains specific communities as parts. Certain companies who run thousands of interest-specific web forums might be able o pull this off.
A few words went missing in my post. That should say:
"As I originally stated, with laches you lose the right to enforce to the degree that you failed to police it."
For example, if a university allows local businesses to print and sell T-shirts using the university logo, and doesn't take any action to stop them over a number of years, they'd lose the right to enforce it on T-shirts printed by the local businesses. They wouldn't lose all trademark rights.
Here SFLC not only ALLOWED the SFC to use the name, officers of SFLC helped *choose* the name for SFC to use and did the trademark registration. This is like if you helped write the Debian Social Contract, borrowing wording from the Open Source Definition, then you turned around and sued Debian for copyright infringement on the Definition - suing them for doing something you helped them do.
Genericide is one of four different ways to lose your trademark rights. The others are laches, abandonment, and excessive licensing. Three of them can result in complete loss of all rights, laches results in loss of rights to the degree that complainant failed to defend them in a timely fashion.
Laches is probably the best fit here. As I said originally, with laches you lose For recent high-profile cases see Fitbug v. Fitbit, No. 13-1418, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 8775 (N.D. Cal. Jan. 26, 2015) and Eat Right Foods, Ltd v. Whole Foods Mkt., Inc., No. C13-2174, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 63578 (W.D. Wash. May 14, 2015). In each, the trademark holder failed to file suit quickly after they became aware of infringement, and therefore they were barred from enforcing their rights at all.
Abandonment meant is mainly focused on complainant not using the mark in commerce for a period of time, but use include licensing. Actively requiring other users to enter into a licensing agreement will prevent abandonment.
Excessive licensing occurs when a rightsholder allows too many other people to use the mark, even with a license agreement. If Wendy's allowed just any hamburger joint to use their Wendy's trademark for a fee of $100/month, with no other control of hamburger quality etc, they would lose the mark because the Wendy's would no longer indicate a specific hamburger restaurant concept with a specific menu, specific quality standards, etc.
>Since corporations can't file lawsuits pro-se, they're required to hire a lawyer to do it
The Software Freedom LAW Center is a bunch of lawyers. Any of them can represent the Center, or indeed they can HIRE themselves, putting donation money in their own pocket.
It's interesting to note that the Software Freedom Law Center helped create the Software Freedom Conservancy. SFLC staff probably came up with the name "Software Freedom Conservancy", so they'd have a tough case to make in court now.
In trademark law, one must either defend your name, or lose rights to it to the extent that you didn't defend it. "Defend" could include granting explicit permission for someone else to use it. You can't just ignore someone using a variant of your name for years, then sue them later, after they've already established a reputation under that name.
It seems SFLC has a VERY weak case unless they have a written agreement with SFC tying the use of the name to specific contract terms, such as what activities SFC was created to do. I don't think they have such a contract. Even if they do, their more likely remedy would be suing for breach of contract.
Yeah it's hard to come up with a single number that works well - that gives people what they want, but discourages reckless waste. As I mentioned, I probably use about 10GB and I work from home, over the internet. Intensive video uses bandwidth in a hurry, though.
180GB would cost $18 at 10 cents per GB. That would be cheap enough, perhaps, but still enough that people would turn off the TV (video stream) when they go to sleep or leave the house.
180GB is six hours a day of watching SD video, or plenty for just about anything other than video. So it seems about right - high enough to satisfy what most people want, but low enough to discourage the wasteful practice of leaving the TV on, in HD, all day and night when nobody is watching. That's the killer for bandwidth - streaming video that nobody is even watching.
I hope they offer a lower cap, lower price service as well. I use maybe 10GB / month. I work from home, but I don't watch video over wireless internet all day.
If that's the report I'm thinking of, it does a reasonable job discussing "how it got so bad". The sudden increase in home prices attracted more investors, etc. It lays out what happened after the ball started rolling, much as I did above.
It downplays what caused the initial jump, however. You don't just start in the middle at "the sudden increase in prices" and go from there, though. Something in 2006 caused that sudden increase. The massive increase in subprime lending, and therefore buyers, is the only reason explanation for that which I've seen.
To be very, very clear, since you're apparently living in the 1960s, it's not about "can't discriminate", it's "must discriminate". They are not allowed to ignore race and neighborhood, to not even ask that information. The banks are required to keep track of which neighborhoods are high risk make a certain amount of mortgage loans in those neighborhoods. If it starts coming in a little low toward the end of the reporting period employees are told "we must sell and close $4 million in mortgages in bad neighborhoods by December 31. Hustle to sell and approve mortgages to anyone in a risky neighborhood."
So what you're saying is that all black people, and only black people, live in slums? Perhaps do you mean to say that black people don't pay their bills, so mortgages in black neighborhoods won't be paid?
The banks are required to lend mortgage money (basically, buy houses) in NEIGHBORHOODS where property values are falling and there is a high rate of default (people not paying their mortgage).
For a while, they were allowed credit for small business loans in areas that were failing (ie most of Detroit), but that was stopped - it has to be home loans in high-risk neighborhoods (what you apparently assume are "black neighborhoods").
You're not wrong about some of the mechanisms used and han nature that amplified the problem.
What exactly do you think caused it to suddenly happen at that moment? People have been "greedy" for millions of years. That didn't suddenly change. And guess what - it won't change in the future either. Here's a hint at what triggered it:
> this is the important part, trading mortgages as securities
Mortgage-backed securities have been around for many decades. They were quite popular in the 1970s. They were used in the events of 2006-2008, but they weren't new, so their existence wasn't the cause.
> The mortgage crisis was caused by get rich quick scam artists, corporate greed, and Wall Street traders who all wanted something for next to nothing. Financial businesses have a duty to accurately assess risks
Again, people have always wanted "something for nothing". That didn't change (and won't change in the future). What changed was the government arranged for banks to be able to make money off bad mortgages. "Accurately assess risks" you say. You know what happens to a bank that DOESN'T assess risk accurately and loans out the bank's money to people who can't pay it back? The bank goes out of business when they've handed out all their money - unless bad business decisions are made artificially profitable by government. The government wanted risky loans to be made, because "it's unfair that some people can't get mortgages".
Perhaps it IS "unfair"*, but it's mathematical fact that when you loan money to a bunch of people who can't make the payments, you end up with a bunch of defaulted loans and a big mess.
As I mentioned, the problem was greatly amplified by the number of investors and speculators attracted by the rising prices - rising prices that were caused by the sudden increase of buyers in 2006, people who previously wouldn't be able to get a loan because lending to them is a bad risk.
"Greedy" people, people who want to get "stuff" easily, will come up with easy ways of producing stuff, such as the printing press, combine harvester, steam engine, etc. Only when an outside force artificially changes by economy can someone continue to get more stuff by doing things that are actually destructive. The natural way to get more stuff, more easily, is by producing more stuff more easily.
* "Unfair" in the same sense that it's unfair that my friend who jogs daily can run a marathon, while I can't run a marathon because I don't exercise. Unfair meaning different outcomes, caused by doing different things.
That really sucks, man. What a pain. I'm guessing that means there's not a run of utility poles for that mile between you and where the cable company has service? If they have to deal with land easements or digging, $5,000 is about right, possibly a bit low depending on the details.
I'm curious how long you've lived there. For the last 15 years, internet service has been something I looked at carefully before choosing a place to live. The last time I moved, I made sure I was in an area where cable competes with fiber ( Frontier Fios).
I actually already did move to a place that is culturally and politically more in line with my preferences. Check out Mahone Bay and Prince Edward Island.
You have a good point - any major policy change should be made only after careful reflection and should probably be phased in gradually so you can nip it in the bud if problems come up.
That said, you probably couldn't have come up with a worse "example" for the way you were trying to take that. Here's a brief summary of the mortgage crisis:
Congress tried to force bank's to make loans to people who couldn't afford them via regulation.
Banks have employees who can do arithmetic, so they refused to put themselves out of business by systematically making loans that frequently wouldn't be paid back.
Congress, through more regulation, arranged for it to be PROFITABLE for banks to make money-spinner loans.
Bank's did the arithmetic and saw that indeed creating money-losing deals was now artificially profitable, so they did it - a lot.
The easy availability of mortgage money to people who previously didn't qualify meant that more people were in the market to buy houses.
The inrush of buyers temporarily increased housing prices (supply and demand).
Rising prices attracted speculators, which are buyers, further increasing prices.
When the rush of unqualified buyers was over and supply caught up to demand, prices fell. (The bubble is noticeably leaking)
People moving couldn't sell their house for as much as they owed, triggering foreclosures. (Pop)
Foreclosures further increased supply, depressing prices.
Rumors of reactionary legistlation, and actual legistlation, causes bank's to tighten lending standards.
Money dries up, and the velocity of money drops.
It all began with more regulation pretending that social desires would magically override arithmetic.
In the end, what was a popped bubble had a credit crunch added to it by emotionally-driven, reactionary regulation. The bank's didn't suddenly all decide to start making a bunch of bad loans to people who couldn't afford it because they all suddenly felt like going out of business. They started making bad loans because Congress-critters thought they could score political points by forcing bank's to do stupid, then realized bank's would only do so if Congress made it artificially profitable.
You gave an example of very poorly thought out policy change, but a case of MORE really dumb regulation, not less.
Canada is right next door, and significantly more Socialist. Since they have the third-largest petroleum reserves in the world, their standard of living is pretty good, like other oil-rich countries. You might enjoy it there.
I should have been more clear that those were example possible values for $some_bad_guy, not literals. WHICHEVER objectional accounts remain verified now have an implied endorsement, because they've announced that they remove (or don't issue) the check mark for people they don't endorse.
As someone else pointed out, to whatever extent Twitter uses their own moral judgements to decide what is shown on Twitter pages and how they are prioritized in feeds, Twitter starts to become the EDITOR of the pages rather than a neutral carrier of subscriber messages. That can have significant legal consequences. By also banning people based on the things they say, Twitter is further taking on the role of deciding what's said on Twitter and what's not said. That role comes with responsibilities.
> they should've either made the verification process available freely and fairly to everyone (meaning they'd now need a sprawling new verifications department), or they should've removed all check marks.
Or, if they don't want people to think the symbol means "good", don't use a friggin green check mark to mean "ID verified". If they had switched to a neutral symbol such as a stylized "ID" instead of a green check mark it wouldn't look like the symbol meant they thought it was good.
Certainly text like that makes sense, though maybe linked from the "verified" symbol.
Perhaps some people think it looks like an endorsement because it's a *green check mark*. Instead of un- verifying a few people they don't like, perhaps it would have been more effective to change the "ID verifiedâ symbol to something else. Maybe a stylized "ID" symbol. (Think UL mark or the copyright C and trademark TM symbols.
If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.
If it only looks a bit like a duck and swims like a duck, it might well be a young swan. But if it matches all three characteristics *strongly*, it's PROBABLY a duck. (But not certainly).
You did a great job of quoting just part of one of the three definitions Merriam Webster's gives for "axiom".
> If you have to assign a probability of truth to it, then it's not an axiom. You accept it or not, but you don't accept it with some probability.
I see you studied Socratic reasoning; there have been a few advances in the last 2,400 years. Over 99% of all email sent is spam. 99.99% of spam is identified and automatically filtered using reasoning like this:
Emails mentioning V1agra are spam with 98% likelihood Emails mentioning "win" or "free" are spam with 92% likelihood Emails mentioning the name of the product you sell are only 1% likely to be spam Emails from registered.gov servers are spam with 7% likelihood (93% likely not spam) Emails that make it to this filter in the first place are 30% likely to be spam
From those rules, one can calculate the total probability using something called Bayes formula. It's also called "Bayesian probability". With the formula, you can determine the probability if it includes both the word "free" AND the name of your product. It works rather well. It's used all over the place these days. When you log into a porn site, most sites do that calculation to see if you're likely to be using a stolen shared password or just guessing passwords to see if you get one that works. It's based on each part of your IP address (whether you're on the same IP or same network as the last few times that user logged in) , your browser and installed plugins, and other bits of data the server can detect.
An advanced application of this that is in the headlines lately is self-driving cars. The car doesn't know for sure that what it is seeing is a stop sign. It sees something reddish (might be a stop sign), it seems to be on the side of the road (might be a sign), seems to be about 8 feet tall (might be a sign), is roughly round or perhaps an octagon (could be a stop sign), has some whitish marks on it... It figures the thing is probably a stop sign if it has several characteristics strongly similar to stop signs, and few characteristics that are strongly different from stop signs.
Yep, they removed the mark from these people BECAUSE they don't endorse them. So "if we don't endorse someone, we remove the check mark".
They did NOT remove the check mark from Black Panthers and Antifa accounts.
Twitter fucked up here. Once they start removing the check mark from people they don't endorse, obviously people will say "so why don't you remove the check mark from bad person)?" If they refuse to remove the mark, that now looks like an endorsement.
> If we are trying something new how would we even have a probability of it being correct? Isn't that point of experimentation - to figure it out?
I've never tried knocking this computer off of this table. We can, however, make some reasonable predictions about what would likely happen based on some axioms:
Things knocked off tables tend to fall down Tile floors are typically hard Delicate electronics tend to break about 70% of the time.when they hit hard surfaces
Based on what we know, we can predict that there is about a 70% chance that this computer would break if I knocked it off this table.
Using other axioms, we can further say that we'll almost certainly break a computer if we knock 20 randomly chosen computers off of 20 randomly chosen tables.
That's why he said "gather all the evidence you can, develop axioms based on the evidence, then examine if the axioms are likely true, and how likely". That way, when you spend $20 million on an experiment you can use the experiment to test something that will probably work.
> And I can point to 40 in the Linux kernel's USB stack alone from this month
Okay, go! No? How about 4? Still no? Maybe 3? How about ANY at all?
Did I not mention I curate a database of every CVE ever issued? My team looks at each and every one.
> Windows is pretty big. How does that number compare to Linux, plus glibc, plus glib, plus GTK, plus the core GNOME libraries, plus systemd, dbusd, and so on
Compared to the entire standard Red Hat installation, the number of CVEs times their CVSS severity is roughly ten times higher for Windows 8.
> But I write cross platform software for a reason. Most software I write ends up running on linux, but if we have to run it on windows, it's not a problem. This provides flexibility. Having the option to do a gradual migration is better than not having that option.
Absolutely. Cross-platform software makes a lot of sense and greatly eases these things. Many home users only use cross-platform software, specifically Chrome or Firefox.. Their computer is Facebook, webmail, browsing web pages, etc. So they don't care about the OS, as long as they can run their cross-platform software, Chrome. Heck, they're perfectly happy to not really even have an OS, to have a device that *only* shows Chrome in the UI (Chromebooks).
> Even if you plan on migrating to Linux long term, running windows as you migrate individual applications to open source alternatives, provides a way to do the migration gradually rather than all at once.
Certainly. Gradual is good, and has a risk. At some point, interrelated systems probably need to do it "the Windows way" or "the Linux way". Being schizophreniac between closely coupled systems can be problematic.
> Modern Windows in a large corporation is a well integrated platform where each Microsoft application works with the other for central management
Agreed, it's all one big ecosystem. For example, for a short time, Active Directory was the LDAP service included with Exchange. It remained tightly coupled as they were divided into separate products, then MS coupled in several other products and applied "Active Directory" labeling, so just to use Microsoft's mail server you pretty much have to use a dozen other major Microsoft products as well. Integration is both good and bad.
> Sorry but there is no alternative for that on Linux, not unless you have no idea what it does and think that Exchange is just an email system
If you're thinking of Active Directory when you say that, Samba4 is a similarly integrated suite. But AD and Exchange have been separate products for 15 years or so, perhaps you're thinking of something else. This is how Microsoft marketing describes Exchange: -- Microsoft Exchange lets you accomplish more with a rich, business-class email experience on phones, tablets, desktops, and the web.
Enjoy enterprise email capabilities with bigger and more reliable mailboxes --
What do you have in mind other than email and calendar?
The Active Directory suite DOES do a lot. How fucked would your company be if you lost your AD server? If an attacker noticed you were vulnerable to some AD attack and took Microsoft two or three months to get the security fix right, would you still be in business by the time they fixed it? Are you so locked in now that if Microsoft increased prices by 1000% you'd just have to pay it, and keep paying whatever they asked for, because you have no choice? In some ways integration is good. In some ways, having your entire business held hostage by a vendor you have no leverage over is very, very bad. As in it can completely kill your company when it goes south bad.
Slashdot Mirror
> Facebook's value is the number of people signed up to it.
True
> Facebook will remain dominant simply by having the users to create enough content to be interesting. No upstart can beat that ...
Myspace was THE social networking site. Then Facebook challenged Myspace, then beat them. Network effects are.powerful, but not insurmountable.
One of the the more likely scenarios for something else to beat out Facebook is if they start in a very specific niche, such as DoctorNet, or CopBook . The service would be tailored to doctors, but could offer all the same features as Facebook. Once DoctorNet is strong among doctors, they'd add NurseNet, then RxNet, etc, growing their own network effects within a specific community and extending outward until they could challenge Facebook in general. Language specific networks could be another avenue. If a company had a strong presence in German, and Dutch, perhaps, they could add languages and cultures, then carefully interweave the different networks to create a super-network that retains specific communities as parts. Certain companies who run thousands of interest-specific web forums might be able o pull this off.
A few words went missing in my post. That should say:
"As I originally stated, with laches you lose the right to enforce to the degree that you failed to police it."
For example, if a university allows local businesses to print and sell T-shirts using the university logo, and doesn't take any action to stop them over a number of years, they'd lose the right to enforce it on T-shirts printed by the local businesses. They wouldn't lose all trademark rights.
Here SFLC not only ALLOWED the SFC to use the name, officers of SFLC helped *choose* the name for SFC to use and did the trademark registration. This is like if you helped write the Debian Social Contract, borrowing wording from the Open Source Definition, then you turned around and sued Debian for copyright infringement on the Definition - suing them for doing something you helped them do.
Genericide is one of four different ways to lose your trademark rights. The others are laches, abandonment, and excessive licensing. Three of them can result in complete loss of all rights, laches results in loss of rights to the degree that complainant failed to defend them in a timely fashion.
Laches is probably the best fit here. As I said originally, with laches you lose For recent high-profile cases see Fitbug v. Fitbit, No. 13-1418, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 8775 (N.D. Cal. Jan. 26, 2015) and Eat Right Foods, Ltd v. Whole Foods Mkt., Inc., No. C13-2174, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 63578 (W.D. Wash. May 14, 2015). In each, the trademark holder failed to file suit quickly after they became aware of infringement, and therefore they were barred from enforcing their rights at all.
Abandonment meant is mainly focused on complainant not using the mark in commerce for a period of time, but use include licensing. Actively requiring other users to enter into a licensing agreement will prevent abandonment.
Excessive licensing occurs when a rightsholder allows too many other people to use the mark, even with a license agreement. If Wendy's allowed just any hamburger joint to use their Wendy's trademark for a fee of $100/month, with no other control of hamburger quality etc, they would lose the mark because the Wendy's would no longer indicate a specific hamburger restaurant concept with a specific menu, specific quality standards, etc.
>Since corporations can't file lawsuits pro-se, they're required to hire a lawyer to do it
The Software Freedom LAW Center is a bunch of lawyers. Any of them can represent the Center, or indeed they can HIRE themselves, putting donation money in their own pocket.
It's interesting to note that the Software Freedom Law Center helped create the Software Freedom Conservancy. SFLC staff probably came up with the name "Software Freedom Conservancy", so they'd have a tough case to make in court now.
In trademark law, one must either defend your name, or lose rights to it to the extent that you didn't defend it. "Defend" could include granting explicit permission for someone else to use it. You can't just ignore someone using a variant of your name for years, then sue them later, after they've already established a reputation under that name.
It seems SFLC has a VERY weak case unless they have a written agreement with SFC tying the use of the name to specific contract terms, such as what activities SFC was created to do. I don't think they have such a contract. Even if they do, their more likely remedy would be suing for breach of contract.
Yeah it's hard to come up with a single number that works well - that gives people what they want, but discourages reckless waste. As I mentioned, I probably use about 10GB and I work from home, over the internet. Intensive video uses bandwidth in a hurry, though.
180GB would cost $18 at 10 cents per GB. That would be cheap enough, perhaps, but still enough that people would turn off the TV (video stream) when they go to sleep or leave the house.
180GB is six hours a day of watching SD video, or plenty for just about anything other than video. So it seems about right - high enough to satisfy what most people want, but low enough to discourage the wasteful practice of leaving the TV on, in HD, all day and night when nobody is watching. That's the killer for bandwidth - streaming video that nobody is even watching.
I hope they offer a lower cap, lower price service as well. I use maybe 10GB / month. I work from home, but I don't watch video over wireless internet all day.
If that's the report I'm thinking of, it does a reasonable job discussing "how it got so bad". The sudden increase in home prices attracted more investors, etc. It lays out what happened after the ball started rolling, much as I did above.
It downplays what caused the initial jump, however. You don't just start in the middle at "the sudden increase in prices" and go from there, though. Something in 2006 caused that sudden increase. The massive increase in subprime lending, and therefore buyers, is the only reason explanation for that which I've seen.
To be very, very clear, since you're apparently living in the 1960s, it's not about "can't discriminate", it's "must discriminate". They are not allowed to ignore race and neighborhood, to not even ask that information. The banks are required to keep track of which neighborhoods are high risk make a certain amount of mortgage loans in those neighborhoods. If it starts coming in a little low toward the end of the reporting period employees are told "we must sell and close $4 million in mortgages in bad neighborhoods by December 31. Hustle to sell and approve mortgages to anyone in a risky neighborhood."
So what you're saying is that all black people, and only black people, live in slums? Perhaps do you mean to say that black people don't pay their bills, so mortgages in black neighborhoods won't be paid?
The banks are required to lend mortgage money (basically, buy houses) in NEIGHBORHOODS where property values are falling and there is a high rate of default (people not paying their mortgage).
For a while, they were allowed credit for small business loans in areas that were failing (ie most of Detroit), but that was stopped - it has to be home loans in high-risk neighborhoods (what you apparently assume are "black neighborhoods").
> I don't want to see fucking tap and die sets, I want to see a fucking nut.
When you want to get a nut, might I suggest xvideos.com
You're not wrong about some of the mechanisms used and han nature that amplified the problem.
What exactly do you think caused it to suddenly happen at that moment? People have been "greedy" for millions of years. That didn't suddenly change. And guess what - it won't change in the future either. Here's a hint at what triggered it:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/w...
> this is the important part, trading mortgages as securities
Mortgage-backed securities have been around for many decades. They were quite popular in the 1970s. They were used in the events of 2006-2008, but they weren't new, so their existence wasn't the cause.
> The mortgage crisis was caused by get rich quick scam artists, corporate greed, and Wall Street traders who all wanted something for next to nothing. Financial businesses have a duty to accurately assess risks
Again, people have always wanted "something for nothing". That didn't change (and won't change in the future). What changed was the government arranged for banks to be able to make money off bad mortgages. "Accurately assess risks" you say. You know what happens to a bank that DOESN'T assess risk accurately and loans out the bank's money to people who can't pay it back? The bank goes out of business when they've handed out all their money - unless bad business decisions are made artificially profitable by government. The government wanted risky loans to be made, because "it's unfair that some people can't get mortgages".
Perhaps it IS "unfair"*, but it's mathematical fact that when you loan money to a bunch of people who can't make the payments, you end up with a bunch of defaulted loans and a big mess.
As I mentioned, the problem was greatly amplified by the number of investors and speculators attracted by the rising prices - rising prices that were caused by the sudden increase of buyers in 2006, people who previously wouldn't be able to get a loan because lending to them is a bad risk.
"Greedy" people, people who want to get "stuff" easily, will come up with easy ways of producing stuff, such as the printing press, combine harvester, steam engine, etc. Only when an outside force artificially changes by economy can someone continue to get more stuff by doing things that are actually destructive. The natural way to get more stuff, more easily, is by producing more stuff more easily.
* "Unfair" in the same sense that it's unfair that my friend who jogs daily can run a marathon, while I can't run a marathon because I don't exercise. Unfair meaning different outcomes, caused by doing different things.
That really sucks, man. What a pain. I'm guessing that means there's not a run of utility poles for that mile between you and where the cable company has service? If they have to deal with land easements or digging, $5,000 is about right, possibly a bit low depending on the details.
I'm curious how long you've lived there. For the last 15 years, internet service has been something I looked at carefully before choosing a place to live. The last time I moved, I made sure I was in an area where cable competes with fiber ( Frontier Fios).
I actually already did move to a place that is culturally and politically more in line with my preferences. Check out Mahone Bay and Prince Edward Island.
You have a good point - any major policy change should be made only after careful reflection and should probably be phased in gradually so you can nip it in the bud if problems come up.
That said, you probably couldn't have come up with a worse "example" for the way you were trying to take that. Here's a brief summary of the mortgage crisis:
Congress tried to force bank's to make loans to people who couldn't afford them via regulation.
Banks have employees who can do arithmetic, so they refused to put themselves out of business by systematically making loans that frequently wouldn't be paid back.
Congress, through more regulation, arranged for it to be PROFITABLE for banks to make money-spinner loans.
Bank's did the arithmetic and saw that indeed creating money-losing deals was now artificially profitable, so they did it - a lot.
The easy availability of mortgage money to people who previously didn't qualify meant that more people were in the market to buy houses.
The inrush of buyers temporarily increased housing prices (supply and demand).
Rising prices attracted speculators, which are buyers, further increasing prices.
When the rush of unqualified buyers was over and supply caught up to demand, prices fell. (The bubble is noticeably leaking)
People moving couldn't sell their house for as much as they owed, triggering foreclosures. (Pop)
Foreclosures further increased supply, depressing prices.
Rumors of reactionary legistlation, and actual legistlation, causes bank's to tighten lending standards.
Money dries up, and the velocity of money drops.
It all began with more regulation pretending that social desires would magically override arithmetic.
In the end, what was a popped bubble had a credit crunch added to it by emotionally-driven, reactionary regulation. The bank's didn't suddenly all decide to start making a bunch of bad loans to people who couldn't afford it because they all suddenly felt like going out of business. They started making bad loans because Congress-critters thought they could score political points by forcing bank's to do stupid, then realized bank's would only do so if Congress made it artificially profitable.
You gave an example of very poorly thought out policy change, but a case of MORE really dumb regulation, not less.
Canada is right next door, and significantly more Socialist. Since they have the third-largest petroleum reserves in the world, their standard of living is pretty good, like other oil-rich countries. You might enjoy it there.
I should have been more clear that those were example possible values for $some_bad_guy, not literals. WHICHEVER objectional accounts remain verified now have an implied endorsement, because they've announced that they remove (or don't issue) the check mark for people they don't endorse.
As someone else pointed out, to whatever extent Twitter uses their own moral judgements to decide what is shown on Twitter pages and how they are prioritized in feeds, Twitter starts to become the EDITOR of the pages rather than a neutral carrier of subscriber messages. That can have significant legal consequences. By also banning people based on the things they say, Twitter is further taking on the role of deciding what's said on Twitter and what's not said. That role comes with responsibilities.
> they should've either made the verification process available freely and fairly to everyone (meaning they'd now need a sprawling new verifications department), or they should've removed all check marks.
Or, if they don't want people to think the symbol means "good", don't use a friggin green check mark to mean "ID verified". If they had switched to a neutral symbol such as a stylized "ID" instead of a green check mark it wouldn't look like the symbol meant they thought it was good.
Certainly text like that makes sense, though maybe linked from the "verified" symbol.
Perhaps some people think it looks like an endorsement because it's a *green check mark*. Instead of un- verifying a few people they don't like, perhaps it would have been more effective to change the "ID verifiedâ symbol to something else. Maybe a stylized "ID" symbol. (Think UL mark or the copyright C and trademark TM symbols.
If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.
If it only looks a bit like a duck and swims like a duck, it might well be a young swan. But if it matches all three characteristics *strongly*, it's PROBABLY a duck. (But not certainly).
You did a great job of quoting just part of one of the three definitions Merriam Webster's gives for "axiom".
> If you have to assign a probability of truth to it, then it's not an axiom. You accept it or not, but you don't accept it with some probability.
I see you studied Socratic reasoning; there have been a few advances in the last 2,400 years. Over 99% of all email sent is spam. 99.99% of spam is identified and automatically filtered using reasoning like this:
Emails mentioning V1agra are spam with 98% likelihood .gov servers are spam with 7% likelihood (93% likely not spam)
Emails mentioning "win" or "free" are spam with 92% likelihood
Emails mentioning the name of the product you sell are only 1% likely to be spam
Emails from registered
Emails that make it to this filter in the first place are 30% likely to be spam
From those rules, one can calculate the total probability using something called Bayes formula. It's also called "Bayesian probability". With the formula, you can determine the probability if it includes both the word "free" AND the name of your product. It works rather well. It's used all over the place these days. When you log into a porn site, most sites do that calculation to see if you're likely to be using a stolen shared password or just guessing passwords to see if you get one that works. It's based on each part of your IP address (whether you're on the same IP or same network as the last few times that user logged in) , your browser and installed plugins, and other bits of data the server can detect.
An advanced application of this that is in the headlines lately is self-driving cars. The car doesn't know for sure that what it is seeing is a stop sign. It sees something reddish (might be a stop sign), it seems to be on the side of the road (might be a sign), seems to be about 8 feet tall (might be a sign), is roughly round or perhaps an octagon (could be a stop sign), has some whitish marks on it ...
It figures the thing is probably a stop sign if it has several characteristics strongly similar to stop signs, and few characteristics that are strongly different from stop signs.
Yep, they removed the mark from these people BECAUSE they don't endorse them. So "if we don't endorse someone, we remove the check mark".
They did NOT remove the check mark from Black Panthers and Antifa accounts.
Twitter fucked up here. Once they start removing the check mark from people they don't endorse, obviously people will say "so why don't you remove the check mark from bad person)?" If they refuse to remove the mark, that now looks like an endorsement.
> If we are trying something new how would we even have a probability of it being correct? Isn't that point of experimentation - to figure it out?
I've never tried knocking this computer off of this table. We can, however, make some reasonable predictions about what would likely happen based on some axioms:
Things knocked off tables tend to fall down
Tile floors are typically hard
Delicate electronics tend to break about 70% of the time.when they hit hard surfaces
Based on what we know, we can predict that there is about a 70% chance that this computer would break if I knocked it off this table.
Using other axioms, we can further say that we'll almost certainly break a computer if we knock 20 randomly chosen computers off of 20 randomly chosen tables.
That's why he said "gather all the evidence you can, develop axioms based on the evidence, then examine if the axioms are likely true, and how likely". That way, when you spend $20 million on an experiment you can use the experiment to test something that will probably work.
> And I can point to 40 in the Linux kernel's USB stack alone from this month
Okay, go!
No? How about 4? Still no? Maybe 3? How about ANY at all?
Did I not mention I curate a database of every CVE ever issued? My team looks at each and every one.
> Windows is pretty big. How does that number compare to Linux, plus glibc, plus glib, plus GTK, plus the core GNOME libraries, plus systemd, dbusd, and so on
Compared to the entire standard Red Hat installation, the number of CVEs times their CVSS severity is roughly ten times higher for Windows 8.
> But I write cross platform software for a reason. Most software I write ends up running on linux, but if we have to run it on windows, it's not a problem. This provides flexibility. Having the option to do a gradual migration is better than not having that option.
Absolutely. Cross-platform software makes a lot of sense and greatly eases these things. Many home users only use cross-platform software, specifically Chrome or Firefox.. Their computer is Facebook, webmail, browsing web pages, etc. So they don't care about the OS, as long as they can run their cross-platform software, Chrome. Heck, they're perfectly happy to not really even have an OS, to have a device that *only* shows Chrome in the UI (Chromebooks).
> Even if you plan on migrating to Linux long term, running windows as you migrate individual applications to open source alternatives, provides a way to do the migration gradually rather than all at once.
Certainly. Gradual is good, and has a risk. At some point, interrelated systems probably need to do it "the Windows way" or "the Linux way". Being schizophreniac between closely coupled systems can be problematic.
> Modern Windows in a large corporation is a well integrated platform where each Microsoft application works with the other for central management
Agreed, it's all one big ecosystem. For example, for a short time, Active Directory was the LDAP service included with Exchange. It remained tightly coupled as they were divided into separate products, then MS coupled in several other products and applied "Active Directory" labeling, so just to use Microsoft's mail server you pretty much have to use a dozen other major Microsoft products as well. Integration is both good and bad.
> Sorry but there is no alternative for that on Linux, not unless you have no idea what it does and think that Exchange is just an email system
If you're thinking of Active Directory when you say that,
Samba4 is a similarly integrated suite. But AD and Exchange have been separate products for 15 years or so, perhaps you're thinking of something else. This is how Microsoft marketing describes Exchange:
--
Microsoft Exchange lets you accomplish more with a rich, business-class email experience on phones, tablets, desktops, and the web.
Enjoy enterprise email capabilities with bigger and more reliable mailboxes
--
What do you have in mind other than email and calendar?
The Active Directory suite DOES do a lot. How fucked would your company be if you lost your AD server? If an attacker noticed you were vulnerable to some AD attack and took Microsoft two or three months to get the security fix right, would you still be in business by the time they fixed it? Are you so locked in now that if Microsoft increased prices by 1000% you'd just have to pay it, and keep paying whatever they asked for, because you have no choice? In some ways integration is good. In some ways, having your entire business held hostage by a vendor you have no leverage over is very, very bad. As in it can completely kill your company when it goes south bad.