Ok, so out of 6 years Purdue lost twice? What was your point again? Obviously they don't win EVERY time, but the number of times they DO win is questionable, to say the least.
I'm a member of another chapter of the same engineering fraternity and have competed in the Rube Goldberg competition. The contest is a farce. Purdue wins every year. It's held at Purdue; Purdue profs are the judges; it's held during Parents' Weekend for Pete's sake. Purdue knows before anyone else what the requirements will be and they don't have to worry about making their entry portable enough to go further than across campus. The headline should just read "Purdue holds Xth annual Theta Tau Rube Goldbeg Contest" because them winning is pretty much be assumed.
1. What you're describing is Transposition, not Contrapositive. The Contrapositive has no place in propositional logic.
2. But hey, since you brought it up, lets properly apply the Contrapositive. You misinterpret his statement: You say his original statement is an "A" statement ("all S are P") but it's really not; it's an E statement ("no S are P"), where S = "people who eat meat" and P = "people who can (truthfully) claim that having someone else kill animals for them puts them on higher moral plane". So, what he's really saying is "no one who eats meat can (truthfully) claim that they are on a higher moral plane when they have someone else kill animals for them". The contrapositive for an "E" statement is an "I" statement ("Some non-P are S"), so, properly contraposed, he believes: "if you are not a person who can truthfully claim that having someone else kill animals for you puts you on a higher moral plane, then you may be a person who eats meat." He makes no claim at all regarding people who are P, which is fine, because the set of P would be an empty set anyway.
Of course, there have been many efforts recently to subvert such principles.
Exactly. In the current climate, it would seem that all the military needs to do is provide the weapons to the police for use in the War on Drugs/Terrorism and let them do the testing. For a very interesting (but a bit on the long side and to be taken with salt) paper on the topic of police and military cooperation that takes huge chunks out of the Posse Comitatus Act, check out "Overkill" at Cato.org.
Drat..it seems that they've removed free access to the text of the study and you now have to buy the book to read it. Still, interesting stuff if you've got $10 to burn.
I would argue that while what you said is true, people who get revolvers for self-defense are more likely to do so because of the simpler operating procedures and because of their "fault tolerance" verses jamming (for any reason, not just a dirty gun)
Revolvers generally have no external safety, so they can be made ready to fire more quickly than most semi-automatics (the counter argument is that with proper training, the movement of disabling the safety becomes instinctual and doesn't really interfere with readying the weapon, and anyway, some semi-autos don't use an external safety (mine don't)). Revolvers are less likely to jam in pretty much any situation, where-as a semi-auto can be rendered inoperable by such things as pushing the slide out of battery (possible in situations where the operator and opponent are in physical contact) or the slide not having proper room to do its thing (a revolver can be fired reliably from a pocket, which would be dicey with a semi-auto). And should a revolver suffer a misfire, the user only needs to pull the trigger again to make the gun function again (assuming the revolver is double-action, as most today are), rather than having to re-rack the slide on a semi-auto to get another try. Of course, revolvers can definitely get dirty enough that they are made unreliable, but you've got to be REALLY negligent with cleaning it or in terribly adverse conditions (from the gun's point of view, like a sand pit or a mud hole or something) for that to be a concern.
Anyone who carries a gun for self-defense shouldn't need to worry about whether or not their weapon is clean enough to be reliable, because it should be. If the gun isn't clean, the person shouldn't be carrying, and that goes for semi-autos or revolvers.
motorists in those states can use cell phones only with hands-free devices, such as earpieces.
I'm in DC all the time, and from the number of drivers I've seen with a phone up to their head, there must be many many emergencies happening..ALL the time. Even though there's a fairly stiff fine, people seem to ignore this law, by and large, and from what I've heard, the cops do nothing to enforce it.
Wow, you sound like you skipped your nap today... Don't trip out, the two of you are on different pages; you are talking the philosophy of "high thinkers" and he's talking the philosophy of a layperson. Throw a cat in a room with a bomb, shut the door, bomb goes off, ask what happened to the cat. The "high thinker" might say "we'll never know until we open the door, until then the cat is both alive and dead (perception makes it real)," where the layperson will say "uuh..yeah, that cat is _toast_ (perception is meaningless in the face of 'obvious' facts)."
I'll second this as a great setup, but I found the ER-6 a little too flimsy for me. Granted, I'm a bit of a klutz, but I managed to hook one of the wires on part of my desk at work; got up to leave and suddenly my left ear-plug goes silent, forever. They're too expensive to replace, so I got a pair of the Sony Fontopias. They sound almost as good, cost about 1/3 as much, and come out of my ear rather than break if I get caught on something (at the cost of a bit of sonic isolation).
While nepotism and self-serving..ness are right at home in a bureaucracy, I think you're overlooking that the main reason maps and other "wide-dispersal public reference documents" are copyrighted is to prevent people from making INACCURATE copies and selling them off as the genuine article. Without copyrights on the map, there would be no way to stop someone from profiting from distributing bad maps.
I'm glad someone mentioned HL2; does it not seem a little strange that every retail outlet (as of the last time I priced it, anyway) sell the game for $55 and it never goes on sale? Ever? It's, what, 8 months old? No price drop anywhere? Sales can't still be high enough after 8 months to support that price. It smells like dictated pricing to me, but isn't price fixing illegal? You see the same thing with Apple products: no one ever has a sale on iPods or Macs. Anyone know the scoop? Have I made an incorrect assumption somewhere?
also, there's always the old "make a mix disk with iTunes, then rip mp3s from the mix disk using...[wait for it]...iTunes" method, but it does result in a loss of sound quality since AAC and Mp3 are both lossy formats.
you may or may not find this interesting: A buddy of mine and I got passes to see a sneak-preview of The Incredibles in DC back in October. The Writer/Director was there and there was a Q&A with the audience after the movie, my friend was the first person to ask a question and asked basically "how big a fan of the Watchman are you, I saw a lot of the same themes in this movie, did you mean for it to be an homage?" to which Mr. Bird replied something along the lines of "never read it, I was never into comics, this stuff is all from my own head."
come ON, for a PC user with a little bit of extra money sitting around who's interested in a Mac, this is a great deal. They've already got all the stuff they need to run it, it's small, unobtrusive, powerful enough to do the things Macs do (ie, get your everyday work done), and is still pretty sexy.
Yes there are cheaper alternatives, but they're not THAT much cheaper. Paying $200 more for a Mac (using your math from above) is demonstrably better than paying $500+ more for a Mac, and the user experience is going to be pretty much the same for the buyer in either case.
I think his concern is more that the sensors will fail to recognize the proper owner when the time comes to use the weapon, at least that's how i read it. And anyway, in the FA it indicates that the readings are from pressure sensors (at least partly), and that the "Embedded sensors in the experimental gun then can read and record the size and force of the users' hand during the first second when the trigger is squeezed." I guess I'd be worried that in a high-stress situation I don't hold the weapon with the same amount of force that I do while at the range.
Also, the idea of a gun needing electricity seems a little strange, I just picture a cop coming home at night and plugging in their pistol next to their cellphone charger...
Point taken, you do not say that stealing is ok, just that it could be arguable whether or not pirating Windows is wrong. If your post meant to point out that morality is flexible then I misinterpreted and I apologize. If that was something else entirely, fine, but you could be a little clearer with your point, I guess. You've got to give me that it was an easy mistake to make.
Still, accusing vlad petric of making a strawman attack isn't really fair, since his post could just as easily be interpreted as him saying, "no, stealing is wrong because the Bible says so; there is no debate" (which indicates a less-than-clear understanding that morality is relative and that not everyone uses the Bible as a playbook, but is otherwise a valid point if one allows "piracy" and "stealing" to be used interchangeably [which some do and some don't]) as it could be interpreted as him pretending you said stealing was ok.
And really, it didn't read like he was making a dig on Windows, just saying that if one doesn't like Windows, there are free alternatives.
Strawman would be if he used a weak and easily refutable point of yours to base his argument upon...buuuut since he doesn't do that and, in fact, cuts to the chase by saying, basically, "hey, if you don't feel that Windows is a good value, here's a free alternative that you might like. You don't need to steal Windows", which is a completely valid argument and kinda cuts your "Microsoft is evil, therefore it's ok to steal from them" implication to ribbons, then no, "strawman argumentation" really doesn't ring a bell.
"Non Sequitur", "Ad Misericordiam", and "Red Herring" do ring bells though, at least when we look at your above post.
Let's adjust the first situation a bit: Psycho breaks in, looking to steal your stuff AND kill or seriously injure whomever they find in the house as a bonus.
Now what? It's not an implausable scenario. How do you know the person who breaks in is a "normal" theif and not a psycho? The intruder has a gun and has demonstrated that they have no respect for you or your rights. What do you do? Just cower and pray that the intruder just wants your stuff and doesn't get his jollies by hurting people? Much love for policemen who'll put their lives on the line to stop this kind of thing, but there simply cannot be everywhere.
I'd definitely rather be armed in a break-in situation, but I really want to know what you would suggest.
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Ok, so out of 6 years Purdue lost twice? What was your point again? Obviously they don't win EVERY time, but the number of times they DO win is questionable, to say the least.
I'm a member of another chapter of the same engineering fraternity and have competed in the Rube Goldberg competition. The contest is a farce. Purdue wins every year. It's held at Purdue; Purdue profs are the judges; it's held during Parents' Weekend for Pete's sake. Purdue knows before anyone else what the requirements will be and they don't have to worry about making their entry portable enough to go further than across campus. The headline should just read "Purdue holds Xth annual Theta Tau Rube Goldbeg Contest" because them winning is pretty much be assumed.
1. What you're describing is Transposition, not Contrapositive. The Contrapositive has no place in propositional logic.
2. But hey, since you brought it up, lets properly apply the Contrapositive. You misinterpret his statement: You say his original statement is an "A" statement ("all S are P") but it's really not; it's an E statement ("no S are P"), where S = "people who eat meat" and P = "people who can (truthfully) claim that having someone else kill animals for them puts them on higher moral plane". So, what he's really saying is "no one who eats meat can (truthfully) claim that they are on a higher moral plane when they have someone else kill animals for them". The contrapositive for an "E" statement is an "I" statement ("Some non-P are S"), so, properly contraposed, he believes: "if you are not a person who can truthfully claim that having someone else kill animals for you puts you on a higher moral plane, then you may be a person who eats meat." He makes no claim at all regarding people who are P, which is fine, because the set of P would be an empty set anyway.
Out of curiosity, would your view on the matter change any if you had a "sit around the table playing with buddies" on Thursday night instead?
that's a very nice sig, by the way.
Of course, there have been many efforts recently to subvert such principles.
Exactly. In the current climate, it would seem that all the military needs to do is provide the weapons to the police for use in the War on Drugs/Terrorism and let them do the testing. For a very interesting (but a bit on the long side and to be taken with salt) paper on the topic of police and military cooperation that takes huge chunks out of the Posse Comitatus Act, check out "Overkill" at Cato.org.
Drat..it seems that they've removed free access to the text of the study and you now have to buy the book to read it. Still, interesting stuff if you've got $10 to burn.
Eh, the states in favor of strong states rights thought the same thing in 1861. I guess 11 isn't "enough".
I would argue that while what you said is true, people who get revolvers for self-defense are more likely to do so because of the simpler operating procedures and because of their "fault tolerance" verses jamming (for any reason, not just a dirty gun)
Revolvers generally have no external safety, so they can be made ready to fire more quickly than most semi-automatics (the counter argument is that with proper training, the movement of disabling the safety becomes instinctual and doesn't really interfere with readying the weapon, and anyway, some semi-autos don't use an external safety (mine don't)). Revolvers are less likely to jam in pretty much any situation, where-as a semi-auto can be rendered inoperable by such things as pushing the slide out of battery (possible in situations where the operator and opponent are in physical contact) or the slide not having proper room to do its thing (a revolver can be fired reliably from a pocket, which would be dicey with a semi-auto). And should a revolver suffer a misfire, the user only needs to pull the trigger again to make the gun function again (assuming the revolver is double-action, as most today are), rather than having to re-rack the slide on a semi-auto to get another try. Of course, revolvers can definitely get dirty enough that they are made unreliable, but you've got to be REALLY negligent with cleaning it or in terribly adverse conditions (from the gun's point of view, like a sand pit or a mud hole or something) for that to be a concern.
Anyone who carries a gun for self-defense shouldn't need to worry about whether or not their weapon is clean enough to be reliable, because it should be. If the gun isn't clean, the person shouldn't be carrying, and that goes for semi-autos or revolvers.
motorists in those states can use cell phones only with hands-free devices, such as earpieces.
I'm in DC all the time, and from the number of drivers I've seen with a phone up to their head, there must be many many emergencies happening..ALL the time. Even though there's a fairly stiff fine, people seem to ignore this law, by and large, and from what I've heard, the cops do nothing to enforce it.
that varies by state, in some places judges are appointed by the Governor.
uh oh, you just lost a corner off of your "Dork Toten Chip". REAL dorks know that you don't get a Save against Magic Missle... ;-)
Wow, you sound like you skipped your nap today... Don't trip out, the two of you are on different pages; you are talking the philosophy of "high thinkers" and he's talking the philosophy of a layperson. Throw a cat in a room with a bomb, shut the door, bomb goes off, ask what happened to the cat. The "high thinker" might say "we'll never know until we open the door, until then the cat is both alive and dead (perception makes it real)," where the layperson will say "uuh..yeah, that cat is _toast_ (perception is meaningless in the face of 'obvious' facts)."
I'll second this as a great setup, but I found the ER-6 a little too flimsy for me. Granted, I'm a bit of a klutz, but I managed to hook one of the wires on part of my desk at work; got up to leave and suddenly my left ear-plug goes silent, forever. They're too expensive to replace, so I got a pair of the Sony Fontopias. They sound almost as good, cost about 1/3 as much, and come out of my ear rather than break if I get caught on something (at the cost of a bit of sonic isolation).
While nepotism and self-serving..ness are right at home in a bureaucracy, I think you're overlooking that the main reason maps and other "wide-dispersal public reference documents" are copyrighted is to prevent people from making INACCURATE copies and selling them off as the genuine article. Without copyrights on the map, there would be no way to stop someone from profiting from distributing bad maps.
Yes, they did:4 406575.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/west_midlands/
I'm glad someone mentioned HL2; does it not seem a little strange that every retail outlet (as of the last time I priced it, anyway) sell the game for $55 and it never goes on sale? Ever? It's, what, 8 months old? No price drop anywhere? Sales can't still be high enough after 8 months to support that price. It smells like dictated pricing to me, but isn't price fixing illegal? You see the same thing with Apple products: no one ever has a sale on iPods or Macs. Anyone know the scoop? Have I made an incorrect assumption somewhere?
Please direct your attention here:
Cracking iTunes' DRM with JHymn
also, there's always the old "make a mix disk with iTunes, then rip mp3s from the mix disk using...[wait for it]...iTunes" method, but it does result in a loss of sound quality since AAC and Mp3 are both lossy formats.
you may or may not find this interesting: A buddy of mine and I got passes to see a sneak-preview of The Incredibles in DC back in October. The Writer/Director was there and there was a Q&A with the audience after the movie, my friend was the first person to ask a question and asked basically "how big a fan of the Watchman are you, I saw a lot of the same themes in this movie, did you mean for it to be an homage?" to which Mr. Bird replied something along the lines of "never read it, I was never into comics, this stuff is all from my own head."
come ON, for a PC user with a little bit of extra money sitting around who's interested in a Mac, this is a great deal. They've already got all the stuff they need to run it, it's small, unobtrusive, powerful enough to do the things Macs do (ie, get your everyday work done), and is still pretty sexy.
Yes there are cheaper alternatives, but they're not THAT much cheaper. Paying $200 more for a Mac (using your math from above) is demonstrably better than paying $500+ more for a Mac, and the user experience is going to be pretty much the same for the buyer in either case.
I think his concern is more that the sensors will fail to recognize the proper owner when the time comes to use the weapon, at least that's how i read it. And anyway, in the FA it indicates that the readings are from pressure sensors (at least partly), and that the "Embedded sensors in the experimental gun then can read and record the size and force of the users' hand during the first second when the trigger is squeezed." I guess I'd be worried that in a high-stress situation I don't hold the weapon with the same amount of force that I do while at the range.
Also, the idea of a gun needing electricity seems a little strange, I just picture a cop coming home at night and plugging in their pistol next to their cellphone charger...
Still, accusing vlad petric of making a strawman attack isn't really fair, since his post could just as easily be interpreted as him saying, "no, stealing is wrong because the Bible says so; there is no debate" (which indicates a less-than-clear understanding that morality is relative and that not everyone uses the Bible as a playbook, but is otherwise a valid point if one allows "piracy" and "stealing" to be used interchangeably [which some do and some don't]) as it could be interpreted as him pretending you said stealing was ok.
And really, it didn't read like he was making a dig on Windows, just saying that if one doesn't like Windows, there are free alternatives.
"Non Sequitur", "Ad Misericordiam", and "Red Herring" do ring bells though, at least when we look at your above post.
There might be a patch for quitting the internet?
..Oh, wait, no, that was just the crappy firewall.
Didn't that get rolled in with XP SP2?
Let's adjust the first situation a bit: Psycho breaks in, looking to steal your stuff AND kill or seriously injure whomever they find in the house as a bonus.
Now what? It's not an implausable scenario. How do you know the person who breaks in is a "normal" theif and not a psycho? The intruder has a gun and has demonstrated that they have no respect for you or your rights. What do you do? Just cower and pray that the intruder just wants your stuff and doesn't get his jollies by hurting people? Much love for policemen who'll put their lives on the line to stop this kind of thing, but there simply cannot be everywhere.
I'd definitely rather be armed in a break-in situation, but I really want to know what you would suggest.
Yeah, but at least he doesn't rip-off Ctrl+Alt+Del.