That being said... the U.S. government is remarkably inept at keeping secrets
Uh, that doesn't make sense, there's a non-falsifiable counter-argument: How many of the secrets that the government was successful at keeping do you know about? None, of course, because for those they succeeded! Or to put it another way: How can you make any claims to know anything about the success rate of government secret-keeping? By definition you only know about the instances where they failed, and it could be very few.
SAT3 has two parts, one going along the west coast and another on the east, so in effect it does go 'all the way around Africa', but the east part goes nowhere near Kenya - it would still be a big mission to connect to it. The other problem is that SAT3 is heavily controlled by the South African Telkom company, a horrible monopoly that gouges as much as they can get away with - this is one of the reasons Kenya wants to build EASSY in the first place, to not be dependent on the INSANE gouging by a South African company. In other words the problem isn't just a technical one that they're trying to work around. If I recall correctly some of the delays in EASSY are being caused by Telkom (who obviously don't want it built unless they also have a lot of control over it).
"Soon enough communication infrastructure won't be a bottleneck to development" -> no, but economic/monopoly forces will continue to be. It's not just enough to have multiple cables, you need market competition too. Bandwidth in South Africa is ridiculously expensive because the government protects a monopoly (corruption, crony capitalism etc.), so most of the capacity on SAT3 isn't even used. It wouldn't take much for something similar to happen in Kenya. I hope not though. If Kenya can get EASSY going in a way that is competitive with Telkom then it will have positive knock-on effects for large parts of Africa, but I'm not holding my breath.
That's says something about OpenOffice, but says nothing about OpenSource. It *is* a complex mountain of source code, meaning the bar is very high for inviduals in their free time to even get started, and from what I've heard the build system is a bit PITA too. There are many other OpenSource projects that (a) are smaller (b) are less complex (c) have simpler build systems, and that thus do have many more volunteer contributors. You speak about OpenSource as if it's all one exact homogenous thing. Many different factors affect whether or not a project gains contributors.
Shoulder pains can also be from sitting in a slouched or slightly hunched position for long periods. One might tend to do this automatically if your screen is set to too high a resolution and/or if your eyesight isn't that great.
Perhaps what you meant to say is that *to politicians* it is a game because they no longer feel anything for the negative effects their actions have in reality. But that still doesn't make it a game, and it isn't what you said.
Nor is it even true, for that matter. If you honestly think that no politician is doing anything anymore that does serve people in some way, then sorry, you are just getting 'cynicism points', because that is ridiculous... try seeing how long things keep going smoothly if you take away all the government services you take for granted that those elected officials are in the end responsible for maintaining.
Don't put words in my mouth, I never made any claims about what politicians are like "in my world", how ridiculous, where did you get that? Stop blatantly making things up. Of course they "treat it" as if it's a game, but they know it's not, we know it's not, and it isn't, because by definition a friggin game does not affect the "real world". It can only be regarded as a "game" in the same way that EVERY OTHER HUMAN ACTIVITY ON THE PLANET can be regarded as a "game", in which case your remark is pointless. Relationships are also a game, war is also game, business is also a game, yada yada - so what insight does that offer? We all know these things are played like games sometimes, but nothing real *becomes* a game just because it is treated as such by some, sometimes.
Perhaps what you meant to say is that *to politicians* it is a game because they no longer feel anything for the negative effects their actions have in reality. But that still doesn't make it a game, and it isn't what you said.
Why is that crazy? Gerrymandering, and indeed, much of politics, is a game
Your post getting +5 is a great example of how cynicism is often mistaken for intelligence. If you remove the "+5 Cynical", your post says nothing and contributes nothing to the discussion, in fact it's silly: Politics isn't a game, it's real and affects real peoples' lives.
This is probably fantastic advertising for Dell... not only are we branding ourselves over and over reading this discussion, but there's probably thousands of people 'playing with the Dell website' and trying various ordering options as we speak. Which probably wouldn't have happened without the attention from the take-down notice. "Shh... don't tell anyone, but you can get great deals from Dell if you know this secret inside info which has been leaked!"
Show me a single product that hasn't proven to have any fault of any kind.
So you're saying "All products have faults, therefore all products are EQUALLY faulty"? Think about that again - hope you can spot the flaw in the reasoning.
Can you REALLY not see the difference between someone who:
(a) Wakes up one morning and decides they're going to pick some random innocent weaker stranger, invade their space, assault them, beat them up, perhaps try to murder them, possibly attack their family too, and try to steal their stuff, and someone who:
(b) Always lives their life on the principle of never harming somebody and never infringing anybody else's rights or attacking anyone else UNTIL, and ONLY WHEN somebody attacks them or their family or tries to rape their wife or whatever first?
Don't try to draw a moral equivalence between the two, it is nonexistent. They are totally different - firstly the moral philosophies are completely different, and secondly, from a purely practical perspective: My family and I are PERFECTLY SAFE from (b), and IN DANGER from person (1). Can you not see that difference?
Or do you think these barbarians are otherwise decent people like you and me who are just down on their luck and were "forced" by desperate circumstances to attack others? That we would all choose to murder in similar circumstances, and therefore all need to be protected lest we behave like that someday?) These people are not like you and me.
So maybe you think people just behave this way because of the desperation of poverty. You don't really have "real" poverty in the US, nobody is THAT down and out and the economy still has jobs for anyone who wants to work and welfare for those who don't or can't. The poverty in the US doesn't compare to the real poverty we have here in Africa. But don't take my word for it, consider this: "Jay-Z went to Africa in 2006 on his first world tour and found a cause: 1.1 billion people don't have clean drinking water. He teamed up with the U.N., bought pumps, helped supply clean, running water to an entire village, and, with MTV, filmed a documentary, Water for Life. "I come from the Marcy projects, in Brooklyn," he says, "which is considered a tough place to grow up, but this [showed me] how good we have it. The rappers who say, 'We're from the 'hood,' take it from me, you're not from the 'hood. You haven't seen people with no access to water. It really put things in perspective.""
People who murder people who have done them wrong do not generally get any long term relief from the act.
Maybe not, but: (a) at least they remove some rubbish from the gene pool, and (b) at least they have prevented the perpetrator from (in most cases) inevitably carrying out more attacks, thereby saving some other innocent people from having to become victims. I'd rather not have the person who took your eye still walking the same streets as I (and my family) do. It's perhaps not so much about "relief" or "revenge" as it is about *safety* from barbarians; forgiving the perpetrator isn't going to make them stop their behaviour (which is virtually never justified to begin with). I guess courts + jail is the better, 'civilized' option when it is possible, but in many cases this system unfortunately isn't effective enough. Drawn-out 'civilized' court cases also inflict further trauma on the victims of criminals.
So you're basically saying that those who have never murdered should be treated as if they're exactly the same as people who have already committed murders, proving their willingness to do such? That is the stupidest straw-man argument I've ever seen. If you are a murderer, i.e. have already murdered, you obviously don't deserve the same chances and freedoms as people who have never murdered yet. Duh. Don't put words in my mouth that I didn't say.
Are you telling me that at this point you will be contemplating the value of the life of the intruder? Against the value of the lives of your wife and children!?Edit: Now that would be twisted.
Eh? OK, say someone breaks into your home, while you, your wife and children are there... you are all in danger, your wife is terrified and looks desperately to you to do something. Are you telling me that at this point you will be contemplating the value of the life of the intruder? Against the value of the lives of your wife and children!?
Your tech support analogy is flawed in every respect: Firstly, the tech support person isn't putting you or your family in danger. Secondly, the tech support person isn't depriving you of the rights of use of your material possessions - merely failing to restore your ability to use them for the moment - you still have the RIGHTS to use them and e.g. seek better support from another provider or fix the thing yourself or ask the neighbour who is clued up. Likewise if you see a drowning child, and you ultimately fail to successfully rescue the child, like the tech support person it doesn't mean you murdered the child.
Shooting an intruder isn't a form of justice, it's a form of self-defence - don't confuse the two. If the tech support company is obligated by a contract to provide a service that they are not providing, that is fraud and you have recourse to justice (and hence restoration of rights) without a need for self-defence even in the case that the tech support is completely fraudulent.
I didn't realize I also needed to personally get out there and play Dirty Harry in order to keep the barbarians at bay
Unfortunately that is basically what you have to do. Idealism is nice, and it's nice to dream of such a world where the "justice system" is highly effective at keeping you safe and protected. But we still don't live that ideal world, and there really are lots of bad people out there who won't think twice about shooting you or stealing from you. And when they place you in that position, there is an extremely good chance that nobody from that "justice system" - no cop, no judge, no lawyer - is going to be there to protect you. Sooner or later you will be a victim too, and the delusion that the system will keep you safe and protected will break. In most cases the "justice system" only cleans up after a crime has already taken place - and justice is meted out only if they actually catch the guys who did it.
I'm certainly not suggesting anarchy; but the reality is that nobody is safe and ultimately you are the only one who is going to be there to protect you when push comes to shove... being personally prepared for it should be seen as a supplement to the overall legal system.
Even if you could rehabilitate the shitbags, why should we? So now not only do we get to be victims of scumbags, we now also must be obligated to spend our own time and money "fixing" them? I've got an idea, why don't they just not commit crimes in the first place? We don't owe them anything. Anyway, you statistically cannot rehabilitate 100% of criminals, so by rehabilitating, you have a 100% chance that you are in effect purposely releasing offenders to later commit more crimes. In other words, if you "rehabilitate" and release, say, 1000 murderers, and on average say 5% will re-offend, you are basically KNOWINGLY causing another 20 avoidable murders of innocent people by knowingly releasing killers onto the streets. WTF? How did such craziness arise in our society?
The only valid reason to perhaps not get rid of criminals is that statistically you're going to nail some innocents; you often just can't prove who committed a crime for sure.
Actually, depending how you view things, they don't have to add up to 100%, as a single user can use more than one browser - so this would be a poll where multiple boxes can be checked. I browse slashdot from a few different computers with at least three or four different browsers (I'd say I've used at least five of the above in the list during the last year).
The error in reasoning here is an inductive fallacy: "Claims of Apple games support in the past turned out to be false. THEREFORE, this latest claim must be false too."... the situation has changed and is different to (and independent of) the situation several years ago. The latest claims may or may not be false and have nothing to do with the prior claims.
(1) Perhaps there are, and these investors are them. (2) Not necessarily, if one needs to develop a special kind of "receiver" in order to receive the messages, then the first point in time at which such messages could be received would be when such receiver technology was invented (such point in time would be in the future still). If that point was in, say, 2015, then you could send messages from 2019 to 2015 but not from 2019 to 2007. You could *send* such messages, but nobody would have the technology to even realise that such messages were being sent. Like transmitting radio signals to cavemen.
Re:I tried to WTFA
on
Photosynth Demo
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I did WTFA, and I obviously paid more attention than you did, because the most interesting part of the demo is preceded by a comment along the lines of "I'd like to jump straight to one of Miller's original datasets and this is from an early prototype of Photosynth that we first got working this summer"... I repeat myself again, they developed the cool technology AND THEN AFTERWARDS it was bought into by Microsoft.
Uh, the innovation had already occurred by the time of purchase of equity. "Someone else's equity at the time" is perhaps what you meant, but I don't see MS investing in company's whose research is still at the 'idea' stage.
Hmm.. so that leaves us with either "flamebait", or he's just a rather critical guy. I must say I personally also find all current systems disappointing on various levels; the whole industry is not where it should be. Surely the point of reviews isn't just to trash everything though, but to then help people find the best options for them under the circumstances. I'm not sure he's achieved that.
Unfortunately file sharing networks are not terribly practical in the country I live, since bandwidth is extremely expensive and limited and slow (government-protected telecomms monopoly, so they gouge very badly). So it's much harder to get pirated Mac software here (although not impossible but usually one has to have a network of contacts which I don't), and so it's definitely a factor for me at least.
Isn't "corruption" more to do with government services? This is private money exchanging hands privately - nothing wrong with that in and of itself, nothing wrong with accepting money for what are essentially ads or selling essentially ad space to the highest bidders, in principle. So what is the part that is morally wrong? The fact that reviews are presented as impartial and objective to the readers when they are in fact basically just paid ads (even if the review would've had the same content without the payola, you're still pawning the space to a manufacturer).
So the part that is morally wrong here is that they're basically lying to their readers about what the content is (and in some cases I'm pretty sure the content must be dishonest too). I think that would better fall under the term "fraud".
Slashdot Mirror
That being said... the U.S. government is remarkably inept at keeping secrets
Uh, that doesn't make sense, there's a non-falsifiable counter-argument: How many of the secrets that the government was successful at keeping do you know about? None, of course, because for those they succeeded! Or to put it another way: How can you make any claims to know anything about the success rate of government secret-keeping? By definition you only know about the instances where they failed, and it could be very few.
SAT3 has two parts, one going along the west coast and another on the east, so in effect it does go 'all the way around Africa', but the east part goes nowhere near Kenya - it would still be a big mission to connect to it. The other problem is that SAT3 is heavily controlled by the South African Telkom company, a horrible monopoly that gouges as much as they can get away with - this is one of the reasons Kenya wants to build EASSY in the first place, to not be dependent on the INSANE gouging by a South African company. In other words the problem isn't just a technical one that they're trying to work around. If I recall correctly some of the delays in EASSY are being caused by Telkom (who obviously don't want it built unless they also have a lot of control over it).
"Soon enough communication infrastructure won't be a bottleneck to development" -> no, but economic/monopoly forces will continue to be. It's not just enough to have multiple cables, you need market competition too. Bandwidth in South Africa is ridiculously expensive because the government protects a monopoly (corruption, crony capitalism etc.), so most of the capacity on SAT3 isn't even used. It wouldn't take much for something similar to happen in Kenya. I hope not though. If Kenya can get EASSY going in a way that is competitive with Telkom then it will have positive knock-on effects for large parts of Africa, but I'm not holding my breath.
That's says something about OpenOffice, but says nothing about OpenSource. It *is* a complex mountain of source code, meaning the bar is very high for inviduals in their free time to even get started, and from what I've heard the build system is a bit PITA too. There are many other OpenSource projects that (a) are smaller (b) are less complex (c) have simpler build systems, and that thus do have many more volunteer contributors. You speak about OpenSource as if it's all one exact homogenous thing. Many different factors affect whether or not a project gains contributors.
Shoulder pains can also be from sitting in a slouched or slightly hunched position for long periods. One might tend to do this automatically if your screen is set to too high a resolution and/or if your eyesight isn't that great.
Perhaps what you meant to say is that *to politicians* it is a game because they no longer feel anything for the negative effects their actions have in reality. But that still doesn't make it a game, and it isn't what you said.
Nor is it even true, for that matter. If you honestly think that no politician is doing anything anymore that does serve people in some way, then sorry, you are just getting 'cynicism points', because that is ridiculous ... try seeing how long things keep going smoothly if you take away all the government services you take for granted that those elected officials are in the end responsible for maintaining.
Don't put words in my mouth, I never made any claims about what politicians are like "in my world", how ridiculous, where did you get that? Stop blatantly making things up. Of course they "treat it" as if it's a game, but they know it's not, we know it's not, and it isn't, because by definition a friggin game does not affect the "real world". It can only be regarded as a "game" in the same way that EVERY OTHER HUMAN ACTIVITY ON THE PLANET can be regarded as a "game", in which case your remark is pointless. Relationships are also a game, war is also game, business is also a game, yada yada - so what insight does that offer? We all know these things are played like games sometimes, but nothing real *becomes* a game just because it is treated as such by some, sometimes.
Perhaps what you meant to say is that *to politicians* it is a game because they no longer feel anything for the negative effects their actions have in reality. But that still doesn't make it a game, and it isn't what you said.
No, it's nothing like SimCity.
Why is that crazy? Gerrymandering, and indeed, much of politics, is a game
Your post getting +5 is a great example of how cynicism is often mistaken for intelligence. If you remove the "+5 Cynical", your post says nothing and contributes nothing to the discussion, in fact it's silly: Politics isn't a game, it's real and affects real peoples' lives.
This is probably fantastic advertising for Dell ... not only are we branding ourselves over and over reading this discussion, but there's probably thousands of people 'playing with the Dell website' and trying various ordering options as we speak. Which probably wouldn't have happened without the attention from the take-down notice. "Shh ... don't tell anyone, but you can get great deals from Dell if you know this secret inside info which has been leaked!"
Show me a single product that hasn't proven to have any fault of any kind.
So you're saying "All products have faults, therefore all products are EQUALLY faulty"? Think about that again - hope you can spot the flaw in the reasoning.
Can you REALLY not see the difference between someone who:
(a) Wakes up one morning and decides they're going to pick some random innocent weaker stranger, invade their space, assault them, beat them up, perhaps try to murder them, possibly attack their family too, and try to steal their stuff, and someone who:
(b) Always lives their life on the principle of never harming somebody and never infringing anybody else's rights or attacking anyone else UNTIL, and ONLY WHEN somebody attacks them or their family or tries to rape their wife or whatever first?
Don't try to draw a moral equivalence between the two, it is nonexistent. They are totally different - firstly the moral philosophies are completely different, and secondly, from a purely practical perspective: My family and I are PERFECTLY SAFE from (b), and IN DANGER from person (1). Can you not see that difference?
Or do you think these barbarians are otherwise decent people like you and me who are just down on their luck and were "forced" by desperate circumstances to attack others? That we would all choose to murder in similar circumstances, and therefore all need to be protected lest we behave like that someday?) These people are not like you and me.
So maybe you think people just behave this way because of the desperation of poverty. You don't really have "real" poverty in the US, nobody is THAT down and out and the economy still has jobs for anyone who wants to work and welfare for those who don't or can't. The poverty in the US doesn't compare to the real poverty we have here in Africa. But don't take my word for it, consider this: "Jay-Z went to Africa in 2006 on his first world tour and found a cause: 1.1 billion people don't have clean drinking water. He teamed up with the U.N., bought pumps, helped supply clean, running water to an entire village, and, with MTV, filmed a documentary, Water for Life. "I come from the Marcy projects, in Brooklyn," he says, "which is considered a tough place to grow up, but this [showed me] how good we have it. The rappers who say, 'We're from the 'hood,' take it from me, you're not from the 'hood. You haven't seen people with no access to water. It really put things in perspective.""
People who murder people who have done them wrong do not generally get any long term relief from the act.
Maybe not, but: (a) at least they remove some rubbish from the gene pool, and (b) at least they have prevented the perpetrator from (in most cases) inevitably carrying out more attacks, thereby saving some other innocent people from having to become victims. I'd rather not have the person who took your eye still walking the same streets as I (and my family) do. It's perhaps not so much about "relief" or "revenge" as it is about *safety* from barbarians; forgiving the perpetrator isn't going to make them stop their behaviour (which is virtually never justified to begin with). I guess courts + jail is the better, 'civilized' option when it is possible, but in many cases this system unfortunately isn't effective enough. Drawn-out 'civilized' court cases also inflict further trauma on the victims of criminals.
So you're basically saying that those who have never murdered should be treated as if they're exactly the same as people who have already committed murders, proving their willingness to do such? That is the stupidest straw-man argument I've ever seen. If you are a murderer, i.e. have already murdered, you obviously don't deserve the same chances and freedoms as people who have never murdered yet. Duh. Don't put words in my mouth that I didn't say.
Are you telling me that at this point you will be contemplating the value of the life of the intruder? Against the value of the lives of your wife and children!? Edit: Now that would be twisted.
You need to get a handle on the value of life
Eh? OK, say someone breaks into your home, while you, your wife and children are there ... you are all in danger, your wife is terrified and looks desperately to you to do something. Are you telling me that at this point you will be contemplating the value of the life of the intruder? Against the value of the lives of your wife and children!?
Your tech support analogy is flawed in every respect: Firstly, the tech support person isn't putting you or your family in danger. Secondly, the tech support person isn't depriving you of the rights of use of your material possessions - merely failing to restore your ability to use them for the moment - you still have the RIGHTS to use them and e.g. seek better support from another provider or fix the thing yourself or ask the neighbour who is clued up. Likewise if you see a drowning child, and you ultimately fail to successfully rescue the child, like the tech support person it doesn't mean you murdered the child.
Shooting an intruder isn't a form of justice, it's a form of self-defence - don't confuse the two. If the tech support company is obligated by a contract to provide a service that they are not providing, that is fraud and you have recourse to justice (and hence restoration of rights) without a need for self-defence even in the case that the tech support is completely fraudulent.
I didn't realize I also needed to personally get out there and play Dirty Harry in order to keep the barbarians at bay
Unfortunately that is basically what you have to do. Idealism is nice, and it's nice to dream of such a world where the "justice system" is highly effective at keeping you safe and protected. But we still don't live that ideal world, and there really are lots of bad people out there who won't think twice about shooting you or stealing from you. And when they place you in that position, there is an extremely good chance that nobody from that "justice system" - no cop, no judge, no lawyer - is going to be there to protect you. Sooner or later you will be a victim too, and the delusion that the system will keep you safe and protected will break. In most cases the "justice system" only cleans up after a crime has already taken place - and justice is meted out only if they actually catch the guys who did it.
I'm certainly not suggesting anarchy; but the reality is that nobody is safe and ultimately you are the only one who is going to be there to protect you when push comes to shove ... being personally prepared for it should be seen as a supplement to the overall legal system.
Even if you could rehabilitate the shitbags, why should we? So now not only do we get to be victims of scumbags, we now also must be obligated to spend our own time and money "fixing" them? I've got an idea, why don't they just not commit crimes in the first place? We don't owe them anything. Anyway, you statistically cannot rehabilitate 100% of criminals, so by rehabilitating, you have a 100% chance that you are in effect purposely releasing offenders to later commit more crimes. In other words, if you "rehabilitate" and release, say, 1000 murderers, and on average say 5% will re-offend, you are basically KNOWINGLY causing another 20 avoidable murders of innocent people by knowingly releasing killers onto the streets. WTF? How did such craziness arise in our society?
The only valid reason to perhaps not get rid of criminals is that statistically you're going to nail some innocents; you often just can't prove who committed a crime for sure.
Actually, depending how you view things, they don't have to add up to 100%, as a single user can use more than one browser - so this would be a poll where multiple boxes can be checked. I browse slashdot from a few different computers with at least three or four different browsers (I'd say I've used at least five of the above in the list during the last year).
The error in reasoning here is an inductive fallacy: "Claims of Apple games support in the past turned out to be false. THEREFORE, this latest claim must be false too." ... the situation has changed and is different to (and independent of) the situation several years ago. The latest claims may or may not be false and have nothing to do with the prior claims.
(1) Perhaps there are, and these investors are them.
(2) Not necessarily, if one needs to develop a special kind of "receiver" in order to receive the messages, then the first point in time at which such messages could be received would be when such receiver technology was invented (such point in time would be in the future still). If that point was in, say, 2015, then you could send messages from 2019 to 2015 but not from 2019 to 2007. You could *send* such messages, but nobody would have the technology to even realise that such messages were being sent. Like transmitting radio signals to cavemen.
I did WTFA, and I obviously paid more attention than you did, because the most interesting part of the demo is preceded by a comment along the lines of "I'd like to jump straight to one of Miller's original datasets and this is from an early prototype of Photosynth that we first got working this summer" ... I repeat myself again, they developed the cool technology AND THEN AFTERWARDS it was bought into by Microsoft.
Uh, the innovation had already occurred by the time of purchase of equity. "Someone else's equity at the time" is perhaps what you meant, but I don't see MS investing in company's whose research is still at the 'idea' stage.
Hmm .. so that leaves us with either "flamebait", or he's just a rather critical guy. I must say I personally also find all current systems disappointing on various levels; the whole industry is not where it should be. Surely the point of reviews isn't just to trash everything though, but to then help people find the best options for them under the circumstances. I'm not sure he's achieved that.
Unfortunately file sharing networks are not terribly practical in the country I live, since bandwidth is extremely expensive and limited and slow (government-protected telecomms monopoly, so they gouge very badly). So it's much harder to get pirated Mac software here (although not impossible but usually one has to have a network of contacts which I don't), and so it's definitely a factor for me at least.
Isn't "corruption" more to do with government services? This is private money exchanging hands privately - nothing wrong with that in and of itself, nothing wrong with accepting money for what are essentially ads or selling essentially ad space to the highest bidders, in principle. So what is the part that is morally wrong? The fact that reviews are presented as impartial and objective to the readers when they are in fact basically just paid ads (even if the review would've had the same content without the payola, you're still pawning the space to a manufacturer).
So the part that is morally wrong here is that they're basically lying to their readers about what the content is (and in some cases I'm pretty sure the content must be dishonest too). I think that would better fall under the term "fraud".
Pity they didn't name-and-shame the offenders.