OOP: C++ or java or both.
scripting: python or perl or javascript.
This will no doubt change in the future, but I believe those are the best languages to know. Also I would focus on the open source alternatives (gcc, make, eclipse, linux, apache, mysql, etc) as it is cheaper to learn and eventually use. Once you know them it is not hard to transition to Microsoft stuff although you may not want to.
Also, if you are going to learn C++ (which I highly recommend as it gives you a good understanding of a lot of insight into the inner workings of computing in general), I would probably learn some kind of platform independent SDK like QT.
I am not saying the Mayans predicted a doomsday either. I was saying that they were incapable of accurately predicting a doomsday so far into the future.
I will be the first person to say intelligence is relative and in fact I even said they were smart relative to other primitive people.
The point of asserting that an ancient civilization knew less than a modern one, is because a bunch of people in a a modern civilization think that this is not true. It is obvious to some, and less obvious to others. If you don't think the Mayans knew something about doomsday that we don't, this post was not designed to convince you of anything new.
It would have been nice before posting your reply that you had actually read my post.
From my post:
" It is not even accepted that the Mayans even predicted the end of the world, much less that they predicted it to happen in 2012. All I am saying is that whatever predictions the Mayans (or anyone else with their level of scientific understanding) may have possibly made about the end of the world, are almost certainly wrong."
" I am sure they were very smart relative to other primitive people, and are probably not more stupid than a lot of people living today."
No offense intended to Mayans. I am sure they were very smart relative to other primitive people, and are probably not more stupid than a lot of people living today (i.e. the people that defer to Mayans for modern doomsday predictions).
The fact remains that science is by far the best tool available for explaining the universe and making predictions about future events. The Mayans and a lot of other ancient civilizations did a lot of things that could be considered scientific (like noticing patterns in motion of celestial bodies), but this is more of a proto-science that was mixed in with religion and other superstition.
Looking back on Mayan civilization the only things we actually learn are about what the Mayans knew. This is interesting for anthropological reasons, but they didn't have any scientific knowledge that we don't already have. They didn't know anything about Newtons laws, relativity, Maxwell's equations, Quantum Mechanics, etc. They don't have any of the tools necessary TO predict any kind of astronomical doomsday. We (i.e. modern society + our current scientific knowledge) might not be able to either, but we are orders of magnitude more likely to be correct.
Even if by some strange coincidence the world ends in 2012, it will be just that, a coincidence. There are 7 billion people in the world. Every day has no doubt been singled out as a doomsday by one nutjob or another. Picking an entire year increases your odds of being right by 365 times, and it will still be wrong in 13 days.
It is not even accepted that the Mayans even predicted the end of the world, much less that they predicted it to happen in 2012. All I am saying is that whatever predictions the Mayans (or anyone else with their level of scientific understanding) may have possibly made about the end of the world, are almost certainly wrong.
Actually an even better solution would be to eliminate corporate tax altogether and simply treat all income as income subject to the income tax. Also we could eliminate all tax deductions. Home prices would go down as their utility as a tax shelter would be gone. We could reimburse people who have houses based on an estimate of lost property value.
Or better than taxing income, why not have a consumption tax + prebate. Rich people in this country have an uncanny ability to have no income, but still live a lavish lifestyle. Even if they have no income, they are surely consuming much more than the average person.
Chinese doctors?
As a chinese person, I feel like we can safely ignore the opinion of "Chinese doctors" (the kind that perform Chinese medicine, rather than Chinese doctors who perform medicine), without giving it a second thought.
No I can't be 100% sure that there is not something to Chinese medicine. I also can not be 100% sure that there is not something to Viking medicine or African witch medicine.
China has a culture that is thousands of years old, and yet they are still prescribing rhino horn and tiger penis to cure erectile dysfunction. Curing diseases is not easy. Even Western medicine is far from perfect. It is however infinitely closer to going down the right path by decoding the language of DNA, folding proteins, and performing scientifically controlled tests. Many times the "scientific tests" turn out to be BS, but at least there is a coherent standard in science to label a scientific study BS. In Chinese medicine there is nothing like clinical trials or statistical analysis. It is dark age quackery.
If you want dark age quackery to have a say in the public sphere, fine. But at least be fair and allow ALL quacks to have a say. Let the guy who thinks dolphins cure cancer be treated with the same consideration. Let the people who think plants have feelings weigh in on how to cure cancer. Let the psychics look into the future and tell us the chemical structure of the cancer cure drug. Their opinions are no less valid than those of Chinese doctors.
Yes the pundits were wrong. But that doesn't mean that Romney couldn't have won. Neither candidate was remotely likely of winning in a landslide (by almost any definition, although some people thing 48/52 is a landslide). But the data showed that right up until the polls opened Obama's chances of winning where about 2/3 and Romney's chances about 1/3.
2.4% *is* a small difference. Yeah it's 2.9 million votes, but that's what percentages are for. They normalize ratios of numbers at different scales into something that can be compared.
Winning by 2 votes in the supreme court case is much more impressive than winning by a million votes in a presidential election. A million votes is nothing in a presidential election. 2.9 million votes is more than nothing, but it's still not very much.
2.4% is the same margin of victory regardless of whether that 2.4% is a 10 million votes or 1 vote.
The only purpose of patents is to drive innovation by giving people a financial incentive. Things like drugs, which take decades of R&D and clinical trials, would not be possible without patents or some other way to make developing them profitable. Things like square UI gadgets on a phone should not be patentable. It's not like society would be denied the advent of squares if surfcast or microsoft hadn't researched squares.
There would be no problems with patents if we simply used them correctly and only allowed "true" (i.e. non-obvious and non-trivial) innovations to be patented, and even then adopting reasonable expiration times for patents. We are wasting a good chunk of our GDP litigating that could be spent innovating.
I don't see why anyone should have the right to force microsoft to make compliant html files. The observation of standards should be voluntary. No one is forced to use IE. No one is forced to use windows. You are not forced to use a bank with a website that only works in IE, exemplified by the fact that you closed the account.
notepad does in fact have an effect like IE. Windows formatted text files are different than nix formatted text files. If you open nix formatted text files in notepad, all the text is shown on the same line. If you open a windows formatted text document in nix, then there is an extra line feed characters at the end of every line. Should microsoft be forced to adopt the same text format of nix? Should nix be forced to adopt microsoft's standard? Or should we just let users choose what they want?
We currently still have fax machines in society. The fact that people still have fax machines means that they can live in the past and avoid upgrading to better technologies. I need a fax machine (or a modem and fax softweare) to be able to communicate with people who only get fax. This sucks. Should people with fax machines be forced to upgrade by law? Should businesses be legally prohibited from accepting only fax to receive documents?
It is necessary that all standards are voluntary to avoid giving too much power to people *like* microsoft. If standards were enforceable, big players like microsoft could make it illegal for others not to use *their* standard. Microsoft already serves on the board of MANY standards committes. The fact that people are free to reject standards is what helps keeps standards free of suckiness
Well we have Fox News who is ONLY willing to criticize democrats, so they can be the counterweight to the liberal media bias. They seem to be doing a pretty good job at that. If you look at radio, it's almost entirely "conservative" talk show hosts.
You say that the press is not willing to criticize any democrats, and yet somehow you found out about this *non* issue of the Bengazi coverup. It is quite obvious to me that it is simply a case of poor handling of the situation in the whitehouse, rather than some massive conspiracy of lies.
Have you ever thought that maybe the republicans and democrats are just not equally criticizeable?
Don't get me wrong think both sides suck pretty hard. I just think lately the republicans as a whole have been more blatantly childish than the democrats. And I am not a democrat. The last time a voted for a democrat was 2004 (and it wasn't Kerry).
If you need 193 independent agents to be unianimous to act, then you will have inaction. You couldn't get 193 random people from around the world to agree that the earth orbits the sun.
Now if rather than a unanimous vote you allow a simple majority or some kind of threshold greater than 50%, now all kinds of horrible things can be agreed upon. I am pretty sure the world is against freedom of speech at this point. We have Muslim countries who think insulting the prophet Mohammad is worse than murder and a bunch of other countries that don't but think freedom of speech should be sacrificed to avoid offending people's religious beliefs.
I don't trust America to be in charge of the world. I don't trust them to be in charge of the internet. But given the alternative of a worldwide democracy (i.e. mob rule) of countries, I'd rather a single country with some semblance of legal respect for freedom of speech be in charge.
Maybe most windows users keep IE. This ruling is still stupid. Why isn't microsoft forced to include notepad alternatives and MSpaint alternatives. Why aren't all operating systems forced to do this? Microsoft doesn't have a monopoly. Even if they did, what is the point of forcing them to provide alternatives for 1 application type.
If microsoft ACTUALLY had a monopoly here is what they would do. They would simply refuse to modify their OS and refuse to pay any fines for not modifying their OS. They can be banned from selling their OS in stores. Big deal. This only forces users to buy the OS online. PCs can't ship with an alternative browser, because none exist. A country that bans windows is basically banning PCs from their country, and forcing PCs into the black market.
Of course if microsoft did this, Europe would either cave to microsoft or simply force PC vendors to ship their PCs with linux. Gamers would be forced to get their windows from ebay or via download. It's not a big deal because thank god, Microsoft does NOT have a monopoly on operating systems.
Yes that's true you had a choice.
In addition to not playing any new games, you also could not play new Blu Ray movies, use your netflix account, get updates to existing games, log on to play station network, etc.
Refusing the upgrade is not the same as having your PS3 "bricked". But as someone who bought a PS3 I certainly felt entitled to being able to play new blu rays and new games. I think most people did. It was quite shocking to learn that "ability to play all new games and movies" was a feature that did not come with the PS3. It was one that I had to negotiate with every single firmware update.
I will never buy another Sony product.
Why wasn't intentionally removing feature of "Other OS" considered destruction of property?
My point wasn't that this isn't destruction of property, but that they already got away with a less overt, but similar action. Their defense, if it was found valid in court for removing other OS , should still be valid for removing other features as well.
I think they are standing on some firm legal ground (at least according to the courts). You agreed to a ridiculous EULA when you bought the PS3 along with the EULA from every single firmware update. Anything that happens to your PS3 is something you agreed to.
I know I won't be buying a PS4, because I know I would be forced to agree to even more ridiculous EULAs just to use it. The only reason I bought a PS3 was for the media center + blu ray anyway. Now those are pretty common.
In my comment I suggested Sony might send new units, only to those who bought existing units recently (i.e. they are still under warranty). So you w/ your 6 your old system, wouldn't get one under my hypothetical situation:P
You sound like the techies on the internet in the 90s that laughed at the idea that we'd EVER have gigabytes of RAM in a single computer, let alone a few years later.
Playing devils advocate...
For the same reason the court seemed to side with Sony about being able to remove features (e.g. Linux support), why wouldn't they also be allowed to remove other features (e.g. all of them), by bricking the whole thing, especially if it's out of warranty.
It would be a total dick move to do, but it's Sony. PS3 is 6 years old. PS4 is in development. They can manufacture slim PS3s cheaply now. The games are where they make their money. Just send everyone (who bought a PS3 in the last year) a new slim PS3 with new keys, and nuke the rest. They lose maybe $100 per customer, but they get to secure their machine. and as long as they sell at least 2 new games for each free PS3 they send out, they break even. Presumably anyone who bought a PS3 within the last year, intends to buy games for it. Naive people will be glad to get a new PS3 because it's new.
If I was a corporate douchebag at Sony, I know I'd be pushing to nuke the old PS3s and screw over all my customers (because I would be in character).
That's the whole problem with this argument. By arguing that the competition of education should be fair, it assumes education should be a competition.
We shouldn't be grading people on curves.
1. If everyone learns the material adequately, why should we give the least successful people F's?
2. If everyone gets a perfect score, why should everyone get a C (i.e. average)?
3. If no one learns the material adequately, why should the best of the failures still get passing grades?
We should be grading students based on their mastery of the material, not pitting them against eachother. Education should not be a zero sum game.
How well you know the material should not be affected by anyone else.
If drugs can be produced that help you think more clearly, with minimal side effects, then why not encourage people to use it? The fact remains that you know what you know, regardless of whether you know it because you were able to do it because of a drug.
If I could magically make myself understand quantum mechanics like how Neo learned Kung Fu in the Matrix, maybe some would argue that I didn't learn it on my own. So what? If I know quantum mechanics then I can do I can perform the job of someone who needs to know quantum mechanics. That's what a degree is supposed to signify anyway. Who cares how easy it was for me. Figuring out better and easier ways of doing the same thing is a good thing.
I don't understand this desire for difficulty or suffering that people seem to have. There are people that want birth control to be illegal because they think promiscuous people deserve to suffer consequences (i.e. raising a child) for their behavior. They don't consider that enjoying sex without consequences is a good thing. The behavior isn't bad. The bad consequences are bad. So eliminate the bad consequences.
Even if we wanted to preserve the competitive nature of education, our quest for levelness of the playing field is stupid. By that logic we should ban computers and the internet from education until even the poorest student could afford one. We'd have to make everyone blind so that the playing field is level for blind students. We'd have to give lectures that were only moderately comprehensible to make the playing field level for foreign students. It's just stupid.
Both candidates claim to be religious. If you "cannot accept even any hint of an american taliban", then why would you accept any candidate who is religious even if he only has a hint of religiosity.
Sure you may think Obama will not impose his religious views on everybody... If Obama is a true belivieng Christian, why SHOULD he view American freedom, justice, and democracy more important than the fate of our immortal souls? If I was a Christian who believed that what made us human were souls given to us by God, I would be pro life too. I can't think of anything more evil than killing little human beings that God deemed worthy to grant a soul to.
I am not worried about Obama talking to God. Why? Because I am convinced he is not a true believer. He is a liar. He isn't stupid, but the rest of America is. I am not convinced Romney is a true believer either. He is a demonstrated pathological liar. He will lie about anything to get elected. Why would a reasonably intelligent Christian/Mormon lie? Doesn't he think God can know he's a liar? He might just be delusional, but I suspect he is also just a liar saying what he needs to to get elected.
So do we pick liar #1 or liar #2. Neither of which I think believes in the God they both claim too. I'd honestly rather pick a a true honest Christian.
One who is a true pro-lifer (anti war and anti capital punishment as well as anti abortion). I don't believe zygotes are people, but I would take some comfort in knowing that the person in charge has some integrity and logical coherence, and an honest desire to do whats best for the country.
Obviously the best outcome would be leaders who are secular and honest, but it seems like it will be a while before those kinds of candidates can get elected.
A good lithmus test to see if someone is a true libertarian is whether they support decriminalization of drugs and prostitution.
It is not the only or even the most important issues, but they are relatively free of libertarian gray areas.
Unlike an issue like abortion, drugs and prostitution are issues at the core of whether you own your own body, without the added confusion of adding another potential human being's rights into the equation. Libertarians can be pro life or pro choice depending on their views of when the personhood of an unborn human is established.
Mitt Romney is pretty much the opposite of a true libertarian.
If the word conservative was still meaningful, I am sure he wouldn't be a real one of those either.
I say we make the criteria 50% so that only one person is allowed in the debate. Anyone polling lower than 50% is clearly going to lose, and why waste the American voter's time with losertalk? We can't have these fringe candidates messing everything up. They might spoil the election./s
Maybe if we are lucky a 3rd party can take enough votes from both major parties to ensure nobody meets the criteria, and we won't be subjected to these "debates". This system is fucked.
This doesn't fundamentally change anything.
Even if half your DNA is destroyed every 521 years, large multicellular organisms have trillions of cells containing copies of their DNA. You don't need to find a single complete correct set. That is already hard enough to do in living organisms. You can assemble a mostly complete set from many incomplete sets.
Recovering data from a harddrive with corrupted data is very hard. Recovering the data from a trillion copies of the same data that was corrupted in different random ways is much much easier. As long as every section of data survived in some of the copies, it can be reassembled.
Even if there is not enough DNA in a single organism to do this, the differences between the DNA of individuals of the same species is very small. This is what makes sexual reproduction possible. Maybe we can't clone a T-Rex, but if we find enough genetically similar DNA from multiple T-Rexs, we can theoretically make a T-Rex "offspring" of all of them. We don't really care about cloning an specific individual T-Rex anyway. A genetic T-Rex that never existed, but does now, is perfectly acceptable.
Maybe there isn't enough T-Rex DNA in the whole world to make a coherent set of DNA. That's possible. All I am saying is that we still have some more good tricks up our sleeve, and we shouldn't give up yet. We will certainly clone some kind of Pleistocene organism like a mammoth as an earlier step anyway. No reason to decide what are limits are so early in the game.
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OOP: C++ or java or both. scripting: python or perl or javascript. This will no doubt change in the future, but I believe those are the best languages to know. Also I would focus on the open source alternatives (gcc, make, eclipse, linux, apache, mysql, etc) as it is cheaper to learn and eventually use. Once you know them it is not hard to transition to Microsoft stuff although you may not want to. Also, if you are going to learn C++ (which I highly recommend as it gives you a good understanding of a lot of insight into the inner workings of computing in general), I would probably learn some kind of platform independent SDK like QT.
I am not saying the Mayans predicted a doomsday either. I was saying that they were incapable of accurately predicting a doomsday so far into the future. I will be the first person to say intelligence is relative and in fact I even said they were smart relative to other primitive people. The point of asserting that an ancient civilization knew less than a modern one, is because a bunch of people in a a modern civilization think that this is not true. It is obvious to some, and less obvious to others. If you don't think the Mayans knew something about doomsday that we don't, this post was not designed to convince you of anything new.
It would have been nice before posting your reply that you had actually read my post. From my post: " It is not even accepted that the Mayans even predicted the end of the world, much less that they predicted it to happen in 2012. All I am saying is that whatever predictions the Mayans (or anyone else with their level of scientific understanding) may have possibly made about the end of the world, are almost certainly wrong." " I am sure they were very smart relative to other primitive people, and are probably not more stupid than a lot of people living today."
No offense intended to Mayans. I am sure they were very smart relative to other primitive people, and are probably not more stupid than a lot of people living today (i.e. the people that defer to Mayans for modern doomsday predictions). The fact remains that science is by far the best tool available for explaining the universe and making predictions about future events. The Mayans and a lot of other ancient civilizations did a lot of things that could be considered scientific (like noticing patterns in motion of celestial bodies), but this is more of a proto-science that was mixed in with religion and other superstition. Looking back on Mayan civilization the only things we actually learn are about what the Mayans knew. This is interesting for anthropological reasons, but they didn't have any scientific knowledge that we don't already have. They didn't know anything about Newtons laws, relativity, Maxwell's equations, Quantum Mechanics, etc. They don't have any of the tools necessary TO predict any kind of astronomical doomsday. We (i.e. modern society + our current scientific knowledge) might not be able to either, but we are orders of magnitude more likely to be correct. Even if by some strange coincidence the world ends in 2012, it will be just that, a coincidence. There are 7 billion people in the world. Every day has no doubt been singled out as a doomsday by one nutjob or another. Picking an entire year increases your odds of being right by 365 times, and it will still be wrong in 13 days. It is not even accepted that the Mayans even predicted the end of the world, much less that they predicted it to happen in 2012. All I am saying is that whatever predictions the Mayans (or anyone else with their level of scientific understanding) may have possibly made about the end of the world, are almost certainly wrong.
Actually an even better solution would be to eliminate corporate tax altogether and simply treat all income as income subject to the income tax. Also we could eliminate all tax deductions. Home prices would go down as their utility as a tax shelter would be gone. We could reimburse people who have houses based on an estimate of lost property value. Or better than taxing income, why not have a consumption tax + prebate. Rich people in this country have an uncanny ability to have no income, but still live a lavish lifestyle. Even if they have no income, they are surely consuming much more than the average person.
Chinese doctors? As a chinese person, I feel like we can safely ignore the opinion of "Chinese doctors" (the kind that perform Chinese medicine, rather than Chinese doctors who perform medicine), without giving it a second thought. No I can't be 100% sure that there is not something to Chinese medicine. I also can not be 100% sure that there is not something to Viking medicine or African witch medicine. China has a culture that is thousands of years old, and yet they are still prescribing rhino horn and tiger penis to cure erectile dysfunction. Curing diseases is not easy. Even Western medicine is far from perfect. It is however infinitely closer to going down the right path by decoding the language of DNA, folding proteins, and performing scientifically controlled tests. Many times the "scientific tests" turn out to be BS, but at least there is a coherent standard in science to label a scientific study BS. In Chinese medicine there is nothing like clinical trials or statistical analysis. It is dark age quackery. If you want dark age quackery to have a say in the public sphere, fine. But at least be fair and allow ALL quacks to have a say. Let the guy who thinks dolphins cure cancer be treated with the same consideration. Let the people who think plants have feelings weigh in on how to cure cancer. Let the psychics look into the future and tell us the chemical structure of the cancer cure drug. Their opinions are no less valid than those of Chinese doctors.
No, thats not how analogies work. Telling MS to sell Windows *cheaper* is like saying that Apple should be selling iPhones *cheaper*.
He isn't that good at it, he's just doing it as a hobby.
Yes the pundits were wrong. But that doesn't mean that Romney couldn't have won. Neither candidate was remotely likely of winning in a landslide (by almost any definition, although some people thing 48/52 is a landslide). But the data showed that right up until the polls opened Obama's chances of winning where about 2/3 and Romney's chances about 1/3.
2.4% *is* a small difference. Yeah it's 2.9 million votes, but that's what percentages are for. They normalize ratios of numbers at different scales into something that can be compared.
Winning by 2 votes in the supreme court case is much more impressive than winning by a million votes in a presidential election. A million votes is nothing in a presidential election. 2.9 million votes is more than nothing, but it's still not very much.
2.4% is the same margin of victory regardless of whether that 2.4% is a 10 million votes or 1 vote.
The only purpose of patents is to drive innovation by giving people a financial incentive. Things like drugs, which take decades of R&D and clinical trials, would not be possible without patents or some other way to make developing them profitable. Things like square UI gadgets on a phone should not be patentable. It's not like society would be denied the advent of squares if surfcast or microsoft hadn't researched squares.
There would be no problems with patents if we simply used them correctly and only allowed "true" (i.e. non-obvious and non-trivial) innovations to be patented, and even then adopting reasonable expiration times for patents. We are wasting a good chunk of our GDP litigating that could be spent innovating.
I don't see why anyone should have the right to force microsoft to make compliant html files. The observation of standards should be voluntary. No one is forced to use IE. No one is forced to use windows. You are not forced to use a bank with a website that only works in IE, exemplified by the fact that you closed the account.
notepad does in fact have an effect like IE. Windows formatted text files are different than nix formatted text files. If you open nix formatted text files in notepad, all the text is shown on the same line. If you open a windows formatted text document in nix, then there is an extra line feed characters at the end of every line. Should microsoft be forced to adopt the same text format of nix? Should nix be forced to adopt microsoft's standard? Or should we just let users choose what they want?
We currently still have fax machines in society. The fact that people still have fax machines means that they can live in the past and avoid upgrading to better technologies. I need a fax machine (or a modem and fax softweare) to be able to communicate with people who only get fax. This sucks. Should people with fax machines be forced to upgrade by law? Should businesses be legally prohibited from accepting only fax to receive documents?
It is necessary that all standards are voluntary to avoid giving too much power to people *like* microsoft. If standards were enforceable, big players like microsoft could make it illegal for others not to use *their* standard. Microsoft already serves on the board of MANY standards committes. The fact that people are free to reject standards is what helps keeps standards free of suckiness
Well we have Fox News who is ONLY willing to criticize democrats, so they can be the counterweight to the liberal media bias. They seem to be doing a pretty good job at that. If you look at radio, it's almost entirely "conservative" talk show hosts.
You say that the press is not willing to criticize any democrats, and yet somehow you found out about this *non* issue of the Bengazi coverup. It is quite obvious to me that it is simply a case of poor handling of the situation in the whitehouse, rather than some massive conspiracy of lies.
Have you ever thought that maybe the republicans and democrats are just not equally criticizeable?
Don't get me wrong think both sides suck pretty hard. I just think lately the republicans as a whole have been more blatantly childish than the democrats. And I am not a democrat. The last time a voted for a democrat was 2004 (and it wasn't Kerry).
If you need 193 independent agents to be unianimous to act, then you will have inaction. You couldn't get 193 random people from around the world to agree that the earth orbits the sun. Now if rather than a unanimous vote you allow a simple majority or some kind of threshold greater than 50%, now all kinds of horrible things can be agreed upon. I am pretty sure the world is against freedom of speech at this point. We have Muslim countries who think insulting the prophet Mohammad is worse than murder and a bunch of other countries that don't but think freedom of speech should be sacrificed to avoid offending people's religious beliefs. I don't trust America to be in charge of the world. I don't trust them to be in charge of the internet. But given the alternative of a worldwide democracy (i.e. mob rule) of countries, I'd rather a single country with some semblance of legal respect for freedom of speech be in charge.
Maybe most windows users keep IE. This ruling is still stupid. Why isn't microsoft forced to include notepad alternatives and MSpaint alternatives. Why aren't all operating systems forced to do this? Microsoft doesn't have a monopoly. Even if they did, what is the point of forcing them to provide alternatives for 1 application type. If microsoft ACTUALLY had a monopoly here is what they would do. They would simply refuse to modify their OS and refuse to pay any fines for not modifying their OS. They can be banned from selling their OS in stores. Big deal. This only forces users to buy the OS online. PCs can't ship with an alternative browser, because none exist. A country that bans windows is basically banning PCs from their country, and forcing PCs into the black market. Of course if microsoft did this, Europe would either cave to microsoft or simply force PC vendors to ship their PCs with linux. Gamers would be forced to get their windows from ebay or via download. It's not a big deal because thank god, Microsoft does NOT have a monopoly on operating systems.
Yes that's true you had a choice. In addition to not playing any new games, you also could not play new Blu Ray movies, use your netflix account, get updates to existing games, log on to play station network, etc. Refusing the upgrade is not the same as having your PS3 "bricked". But as someone who bought a PS3 I certainly felt entitled to being able to play new blu rays and new games. I think most people did. It was quite shocking to learn that "ability to play all new games and movies" was a feature that did not come with the PS3. It was one that I had to negotiate with every single firmware update. I will never buy another Sony product.
Why wasn't intentionally removing feature of "Other OS" considered destruction of property? My point wasn't that this isn't destruction of property, but that they already got away with a less overt, but similar action. Their defense, if it was found valid in court for removing other OS , should still be valid for removing other features as well. I think they are standing on some firm legal ground (at least according to the courts). You agreed to a ridiculous EULA when you bought the PS3 along with the EULA from every single firmware update. Anything that happens to your PS3 is something you agreed to. I know I won't be buying a PS4, because I know I would be forced to agree to even more ridiculous EULAs just to use it. The only reason I bought a PS3 was for the media center + blu ray anyway. Now those are pretty common.
In my comment I suggested Sony might send new units, only to those who bought existing units recently (i.e. they are still under warranty). So you w/ your 6 your old system, wouldn't get one under my hypothetical situation :P
You sound like the techies on the internet in the 90s that laughed at the idea that we'd EVER have gigabytes of RAM in a single computer, let alone a few years later.
Playing devils advocate... For the same reason the court seemed to side with Sony about being able to remove features (e.g. Linux support), why wouldn't they also be allowed to remove other features (e.g. all of them), by bricking the whole thing, especially if it's out of warranty. It would be a total dick move to do, but it's Sony. PS3 is 6 years old. PS4 is in development. They can manufacture slim PS3s cheaply now. The games are where they make their money. Just send everyone (who bought a PS3 in the last year) a new slim PS3 with new keys, and nuke the rest. They lose maybe $100 per customer, but they get to secure their machine. and as long as they sell at least 2 new games for each free PS3 they send out, they break even. Presumably anyone who bought a PS3 within the last year, intends to buy games for it. Naive people will be glad to get a new PS3 because it's new. If I was a corporate douchebag at Sony, I know I'd be pushing to nuke the old PS3s and screw over all my customers (because I would be in character).
That's the whole problem with this argument. By arguing that the competition of education should be fair, it assumes education should be a competition. We shouldn't be grading people on curves. 1. If everyone learns the material adequately, why should we give the least successful people F's? 2. If everyone gets a perfect score, why should everyone get a C (i.e. average)? 3. If no one learns the material adequately, why should the best of the failures still get passing grades? We should be grading students based on their mastery of the material, not pitting them against eachother. Education should not be a zero sum game. How well you know the material should not be affected by anyone else. If drugs can be produced that help you think more clearly, with minimal side effects, then why not encourage people to use it? The fact remains that you know what you know, regardless of whether you know it because you were able to do it because of a drug. If I could magically make myself understand quantum mechanics like how Neo learned Kung Fu in the Matrix, maybe some would argue that I didn't learn it on my own. So what? If I know quantum mechanics then I can do I can perform the job of someone who needs to know quantum mechanics. That's what a degree is supposed to signify anyway. Who cares how easy it was for me. Figuring out better and easier ways of doing the same thing is a good thing. I don't understand this desire for difficulty or suffering that people seem to have. There are people that want birth control to be illegal because they think promiscuous people deserve to suffer consequences (i.e. raising a child) for their behavior. They don't consider that enjoying sex without consequences is a good thing. The behavior isn't bad. The bad consequences are bad. So eliminate the bad consequences. Even if we wanted to preserve the competitive nature of education, our quest for levelness of the playing field is stupid. By that logic we should ban computers and the internet from education until even the poorest student could afford one. We'd have to make everyone blind so that the playing field is level for blind students. We'd have to give lectures that were only moderately comprehensible to make the playing field level for foreign students. It's just stupid.
Both candidates claim to be religious. If you "cannot accept even any hint of an american taliban", then why would you accept any candidate who is religious even if he only has a hint of religiosity. Sure you may think Obama will not impose his religious views on everybody... If Obama is a true belivieng Christian, why SHOULD he view American freedom, justice, and democracy more important than the fate of our immortal souls? If I was a Christian who believed that what made us human were souls given to us by God, I would be pro life too. I can't think of anything more evil than killing little human beings that God deemed worthy to grant a soul to. I am not worried about Obama talking to God. Why? Because I am convinced he is not a true believer. He is a liar. He isn't stupid, but the rest of America is. I am not convinced Romney is a true believer either. He is a demonstrated pathological liar. He will lie about anything to get elected. Why would a reasonably intelligent Christian/Mormon lie? Doesn't he think God can know he's a liar? He might just be delusional, but I suspect he is also just a liar saying what he needs to to get elected. So do we pick liar #1 or liar #2. Neither of which I think believes in the God they both claim too. I'd honestly rather pick a a true honest Christian. One who is a true pro-lifer (anti war and anti capital punishment as well as anti abortion). I don't believe zygotes are people, but I would take some comfort in knowing that the person in charge has some integrity and logical coherence, and an honest desire to do whats best for the country. Obviously the best outcome would be leaders who are secular and honest, but it seems like it will be a while before those kinds of candidates can get elected.
A good lithmus test to see if someone is a true libertarian is whether they support decriminalization of drugs and prostitution. It is not the only or even the most important issues, but they are relatively free of libertarian gray areas. Unlike an issue like abortion, drugs and prostitution are issues at the core of whether you own your own body, without the added confusion of adding another potential human being's rights into the equation. Libertarians can be pro life or pro choice depending on their views of when the personhood of an unborn human is established. Mitt Romney is pretty much the opposite of a true libertarian. If the word conservative was still meaningful, I am sure he wouldn't be a real one of those either.
I say we make the criteria 50% so that only one person is allowed in the debate. Anyone polling lower than 50% is clearly going to lose, and why waste the American voter's time with losertalk? We can't have these fringe candidates messing everything up. They might spoil the election. /s
Maybe if we are lucky a 3rd party can take enough votes from both major parties to ensure nobody meets the criteria, and we won't be subjected to these "debates". This system is fucked.
This doesn't fundamentally change anything. Even if half your DNA is destroyed every 521 years, large multicellular organisms have trillions of cells containing copies of their DNA. You don't need to find a single complete correct set. That is already hard enough to do in living organisms. You can assemble a mostly complete set from many incomplete sets. Recovering data from a harddrive with corrupted data is very hard. Recovering the data from a trillion copies of the same data that was corrupted in different random ways is much much easier. As long as every section of data survived in some of the copies, it can be reassembled. Even if there is not enough DNA in a single organism to do this, the differences between the DNA of individuals of the same species is very small. This is what makes sexual reproduction possible. Maybe we can't clone a T-Rex, but if we find enough genetically similar DNA from multiple T-Rexs, we can theoretically make a T-Rex "offspring" of all of them. We don't really care about cloning an specific individual T-Rex anyway. A genetic T-Rex that never existed, but does now, is perfectly acceptable. Maybe there isn't enough T-Rex DNA in the whole world to make a coherent set of DNA. That's possible. All I am saying is that we still have some more good tricks up our sleeve, and we shouldn't give up yet. We will certainly clone some kind of Pleistocene organism like a mammoth as an earlier step anyway. No reason to decide what are limits are so early in the game.