What about the fact that OS X comes with a free copy of the Developer Tools
Oh is that included with the $1500 and-rougly-equivalent-to-a-$600-windows-laptop hardware ? Great.
and the fact that Linux comes with free compilers (or you can easily obtain said free compilers)?
I do know how to use those compilers. Took 3 years of my life to learn to use them properly. That's also a cost.
Is Visual Basic free? I seem to remember that it is not, but could someone who knows for sure let us know?
Yep. Google "express edition"
I know that if I wanted to learn programming, I'd rather do it using a system that uses standardized file formats, has a standardized UI and clear UI guidelines -- and doesn't charge an arm and a leg for the tools needed to do the actual programming.
This is not true at all. Those "standardized" file formats are in complexity at least a few years of what a 13-year old beginning programmer is capable of handling.
That standardized UI is not something you want to really take into account the first, oh, 5 years that you program. And for games you don't want to take it into account - ever. The overriding demand a beginning programmer has on the gui is that the gui has to be done in 5 minutes (max). Visual studio can do this. Linux can not (even though kdevelop is a good attempt, but let's face facts, about equal to something like borland pascal 7.0), xcode is at about the level of an ancient version visual basic (which is better than borland pascal).
The best tools in the UI department for quick development, let's be fair, are in visual studio. And that tool is free. Xcode is only free if you pay the hefty premium for the apple hardware.
What makes windows the ideal platform for beginning (ie. not yet as controlled or smart, certainly not capable of applying rigorous methods to software development) is exactly the difference between windows and macs.
Windows : -> a giant utterly cacophonic marketplace. It's everywhere. It's not all that nice to look at, but you'll find everything you ever dreamed of somewhere. If you want to set up shop, you just... do it. Nobody's holding you back.
Mac : -> a central shiny ivory tower, sitting on a disc formed by beautiful, and capable hardware, that's just a tad expensive, with lots of guns guarding the entrance. If you attempt to actually compete with the "great minds" inside of the tower, you will find you applications unceremoniously thrown off the edge of the disc. Every device will start refusing it, without the users having any say in it. Of course, this exact process is what keeps the surface of the disc so clean, which is exactly what you admire about apple.
Apple is the company that's going to implement the controls that "the right to read" from Stallman was talking about. Microsoft would add them to a huge marketplace, with lots of stuff inside the controls, and lots more stuff outside of the controls.
And apple can't relent. Not now, not ever. Because an apple that relents and lets developers do as they please, would quickly become another windows. With dozens upon dozens of UI standards, languages that "mostly" communicate and thousands of never-reused application formats. In other words, a Mac OS X that runs on anything, allows developers whatever they want would quickly become... windows.
But of course, that's reality. Not something you will find much in "progressive" circles.
I'm a developer, who actually analyses & writes code for a living. Code that actually has to work (actually I'm a consultant, currently developing for a bank, the current instance of the database that my code has to work against was, I'm not kidding, started before I was born. And it's still running. How do you query it ? You take a terminal change "a part of the 80x25 screen" (I'm not kidding), then write "+SAM" and it executes everything above the current cursor and changes the text into the response. Now imagine doing that from C++ code. That's what "it needs to work" means. Oh btw, this method of working is, I kid you not, called "EASY". And apparently, compared to it's predecessor, it is easy).
Let's say I want to start apple programming, let's evaluate what I need : -> an apple desktop or laptop. The bottom end or second-hand simply won't run os X (or won't run it acceptably or for very long), we're talking at least $1300 to $1800. I can only buy this directly from apple, no competition or alternatives exist here -> a membership of apple's "development club" : $99 (a month I believe) -> I need to get my software into the apple stores and into shop.apple.com, because there is no other channel. And if it doesn't follow apple's interpretation of the "user interface guidelines" (which quicktime violates rougly in the manner a fat pakistani violates a goat) it's just not going to happen -> I need to learn & develop my software in objective C. Again, there is no (useable) alternative with support from apple. To add insult to injury, nobody else uses objC (well I believe there is a linux desktop environment in the language).
On windows... buy myself a $499 laptop (which will more than do, and come with windows). I pick whatever company I want (one that's close for example) to sell it to me. I get a beer the next time I see the guy selling it to me in a cafe. I download visual studio express (which knocks the socks of xcode, but I will fully admit xcode is useable), which let's me develop, fully supported (and even free) in C#, C++, Basic, F#, Python (after a few downloads from microsoft reasearch). I download another dev environment, eclipse (by ibm) or one by sun, and I develop in java. I download another and develop in pascal. Support is available, even from microsoft, for all of these languages, and they're open and widely used, including used by microsoft.
I go to the nearest company, and they have 10 programs they're willing to pay me to develop. I go to the nearest shop, even did this with a supermarket once, and they're willing to sell boxed versions of software I wrote. There are thousands of places like that within a kilometer of where I live.
And you're seriously wondering why microsoft wins ?
You are suffering from PDD, in that you're a user, and you're blaming me for not going to 10x more trouble to develop for mac os x for half the price, because "it looks better".
But we all know the real deal : you want me to jump through 10 times more hoops to sell applications to you, and I will ask you 10 times the price of a windows application.
Of course, you consider this unfair.
To that, I will respond with a fully meant, eloquently put and most satisfying "fuck you". Then you do not buy, I cut my losses and go back to windows. Cya !
Is this a joke ? You're not seriously wondering why the radically different skill that writing good software requires results in applications working according to, let's say, different philosophies ?
The only thing right about apple's interface is the consistency. Can you point me to a way to use anything OTHER THAN ITUNES to get an mp3 playing on my iphone ? Apple is "nice" as long as you toe the line. The only thing apple does a little bit right is consistency across it's interface. Mac OS is impractical, paternalistic in the extreme, and pushy as hell... and yes it's a bit nicer to look at than linux or windows.
This consistency is pushed onto software developers from apple headquarters with, to say the very least, an iron fist.
While this made users initially happy, for obvious reasons developers didn't like it. They hated apple, from the beginning, and the hate only grew stronger. So there weren't all that many developers, and therefore not too many apps for apple.
And then microsoft came along. And gave developers visual basic. Easy to use, fast to get results, but to say the least, not perfect. Obviously given that you "just want to develop something", you "want to give developing a try" you're (and this is still true) going to do it on windows. This was true long before windows became anywhere near dominant in the marketplace.
Therefore there's MANY more apps for windows. And before that all applications ran on DOS. Why ? Because that was cheap and easy. Getting an app to run on mac os/iphone is both expensive, difficult, and you have to pass apple's "commisar". DOS/Windows doesn't force stuff onto you. I'm going to get a lot of flak for this post, but just look at the exact same situation :
matlab vs mathematica. Mathematica is beautiful. Nicely built, nice to look at. And a veritable thumbscrew to develop in, just like mac os. Matlab gets results, and is beyond ugly in design. It's literally a deep dark pit in the ground and you can see a faint red light glowing at the bottom. Yet nearly everyone jumps in the matlab pit.
The exact same situation you have with iphone versus windows smartphones. Why do you only have skype on windows smartphones ? Why do you only have good calculators on windows smartphones ? Why do you only have on windows smartphones... no developer keys, and no restrictions on what you can put on devices. It gets worse. The physical restrictions of windows mobile are MUCH, MUCH worse than those of the iphone. Apple has loosened up a tiny little bit. But that loosening is costing the iphone in consistency, and a lot. It's loosing it's beauty, but it works better.
In the end it's similar to communism/socialism versus capitalism : central planning/forced consistency looks good, and IF you like the guy that's currently at the wheel it may work for a little while. Everything may not work, but at least it looks like it actually fits. Capitalism is a thousand trumpets blowing completely out of sync. But when you have to live with it central planning/communism/socialism is a death knell, and capitalism gets things done (1000 ways will fail, 1 will work, that's the way of capitalism. The 1000 that fail are not a pretty picture, and the one that does gets "all the glory". Communism/socialism/central planning only tries one way, or maybe a few. If those few tries fail... then it's over. No matter how many people know how to solve the problem, nobody else gets to try)
You see that with the olympics in China : the top layer looks beautiful. Lots of nice girls, beautiful city (for the moment). But... it's being forced onto the people at gunpoint. And apple's "easy to use more attractive software" is also being forced at (the proverbial cryptographical-development-keys) gunpoint. It looks nice if the person holding the gun is trying to impress you. It does not look good AT ALL if you're on the other end of the gun.
And developers, the people you as a user depend on, are on the barrel end of apple's gun.
Who do you think is going to win after the "oooh" factor wears off ? Apple is currently a blip, a drop on a hot plate. It will shine... for a short while. Then *poof*.
Well it's easier to "bend the truth a bit" when "changing climate". After all the EU's policy is at best a bad joke too, and it's heralded as the second coming on just about every (esp. left-leaning) press everywhere.
After all co2 reduction goals are set for 2050, at which time we'll have about 15% of the oil we now have, so we're pretty much guaranteed to succeed in reducing co2 output by 85% by then, without lifting a finger.
But some reduction is a "fantastic leap forward" according to BOTH Obama and McCain.
Slashdot... always respecting freedom of expression.
Well, except yours obviously. You don't agree with the commisar (these days the commissar is "Barack Hussein Obama"). Besides... anti-China protests are dying. China doesn't listen and is generally too scary. So they get to massacre (hey so do the muslims, who even worship a massacring child-rapist).
As the Barack said : let's just say the UN needs to put a stop to this ! Sane individual : China has a veto to any UN decision Barack, and other progressives : that guy is not toeing the party line ! Everybody knows just how much we find it necessary to stop other socialists from killing indiscriminately... I respectfully request you leave, sir, through the window. The top floor window. Yep you have to, Chinese tradition. Meanwhile some chinese guy : *pang* Some Tibettan : *gurgle* aargh
(sorry but after the "oh no the police attempted to break the privacy of a child molester"-post I think this is most justified, besides the label "troll" just means you're opressing me ! whei !)
Well polygamhy has one obvious consequence, I wonder why no-one mentioned it before. There are about as many men as women, certainly at the age where they normally marry.
Therefore even minimal polygamy must mean that a lot of men end up without any woman at all. And not voluntary at all.
And if you think this makes women better off, polygamy makes them replaceable. Easily replaceable I might add.
It also necessitates guarding said women. After all, a lot of very young men will be without options for getting any woman at all.
Perhaps that's why they keep blowing themselves up ?
In islam you're even allowed to fuck 6-year olds (provided you pay for them first).
Apparently there's this "prophet" guy who did it first, so they must all imitate him.
Apparently even your own daughter, when she's like a month old. But that's only in Iran (after all this ayatollah Khomeini, who obviously has nothing to do with religion, right ? did it. The girl you ask ? Still locked up in "psychological evaluation").
there are 2 witnesses testifying against him... please. Let's not kid ourselves. (and yes he needs to be brought before a judge, but innocent ? Let's get real)
The communist party is promoting "big business" ? Many democrats will get a heart attack. However it's obvious that this must be so.
Obviously it's true. Right now America's medicine is "big business", so the government should step in. Of course, after that, the "business" part of it becomes about 20 times bigger.
Government has all the disadvantages of big business, and they actually have guns (as opposed to mere allegations of them having guns like we see now).
And the evil directors won't just have "bought" the government, they will BE the government. You know, guns, cannons, thermonuclear fucking missiles, judges and all. They'll all be one single organisation, without any alternative choice.
Thereby guaranteeing, with utter and complete certainty that if a health care company fucks with you, there is nothing at all the government will do for you. Unlike now.
You know, I LIKE clinton (or at least, I like her better than someone else, perhaps it's racist, but...), but she really needs to turn around on this issue.
A lot of slashdotters want to be permitted to violate a number of laws, after all "they know better" (and... benefit themselves from those crimes, but that has nothing to do with it at all), so obviously they side with the criminal.
And yes they have an excuse in this case. But that's for show. They don't want to be convicted for not buying their own entertainment, for not abiding by software licences they use (however they *do* want to force others to abide by the GPL, using financial and even criminal punishments for violations).
And ultimately, torture doesn't work. Eventually, a society that violates basic human rights so blatantly will fall,
There isn't a single nation in this world, except potentially the US that respects the "sanctity" of computer passwords.
Also keep in mind most people don't have their data on their own disk, in which case every single country, including the US and every other country allows the prosecution to access their online (or otherwise, e.g. work) accounts.
So "torture doesn't work" and "will fall" seem a bit over-the-top, don't you think ? EVERY society allows this sort of "torture", including the US.
Never mind that your diluting the meaning of the word "torture" beyond measure. This is not torture at all, a much more accurate description would be "not respecting privacy of a criminal suspect". Causing direct and extreme physical or psychological pain in order to extract information is torture:
Obviously what this lawsuit would do if successful, imprison the suspect because he refuses to prove his innocence when serious and confirmed allegations are made against him by multiple witnesses, is quite a normal procedure, not torture, and practiced by every nation on this earth. If you're caught with your pants down in kindergarten, get seen by 2 police officers, and then "refuse to explain your lawful conduct" obviously you're going away for a long time (rightly). Despite being potentially innocent.
Of course it gets worse than that. Torture obviously does work, in that it gets subjects to say something. Not necessarily the truth, obviously, but it does extract confessions. So what use are confessions that you aren't sure are the truth ? At first sight they're worthless. Except, when you have 2 different perspectives extracted with torture, you can compare them, and "ask" who lied, work your way toward the truth.
Now that is very, very effective.
and often (but not always) the perpetrators end up on the other end of the see-saw.Then, it becomes harder to find people who will obey orders to torture.
Really ? Call me when Omar Al Bashir, or the president of China (two real torturing bastards, one in the name of islam, one in the name of communism) get aprehended. Guess this falls under your "not always". I'd say it's much closer to "never".
It also seems to me that both of these bastards are not exactly having problems finding either muslims to kill/torture/enslave/rape black people or chinese to kill/torture/abort other chinese. Now this too has a long history, and many, many, many regimes had no problem finding a most substantial amount of people willing to torture. Nor are many other regimes, such as, oh say every last islamic regime, having much trouble finding muslims to kill homosexuals.
In history it gets worse : clearly there were enough russians to keep slaughtering people until 30 MILLION people were dead. Mao found people to kill 100 MILLION, and muslims managed to kill (at least) 300 million hindus to create the asian muslim countries. In Sudan, said muslims are still killing to expand their territory.
The Russians that comitted that massacre didn't fell, at least not during their lifetime, neither did Mao, and the muslims murdered their way into the majority of some 67 (!) countries.
Is this what you call "failure", what you call for them to "fall" ?
Evil does not fall by itself, it takes a fight, weapons and most of all, sacrifices by people who try to do good (*AND* realise that 100% good is not a reasonable demand to make of someone, aspiring to do good, and never doing worse than the enemy, that perhaps).
We in America will eventually learn that it was a huge mistake to forsake our principles and become a torture regime.
I suppose all these other countries, all 296 of them will learn it sooner than America then. Heh. Some of them are older than America, and actually torture people.
But, I can only hope that Bush, Cheney, Gonzalez and others will face the music. There'
Well for functions where an ideal body is required or even a positive and little creative ability is required, quite frankly... yes. Or where a non-human body would be a handy thing to have, like when lifting 500 pound crates.
Porn, commercials, promotion, secretary work, tourguides, reporters, "normal" soldiering or policing... would be easily handled by an android that literally, is a perfect woman/man. Never says no, does exactly what you want her to, looks perfectly (or not, whatever you require) as you want every day...
Furthermore androids will soon enough start to outperform "idiot" humans in the thinking department and they have a huge advantage in the workplace : they're more efficient (human body is about 3/100000 efficient, non-vegetarians are worse, not very hard to beat that using electrical motors that can easily be 90% efficient), require no pay, and they can switch bodies when the task at hand requires it. Cleaning tiny ducts will pretty soon be handled exclusively by robots. So will building construction. And if Japan is any indication, they will start maintaining the street without human intervention before 10 years pass.
Do you think companies (or even things like Obama's campaign) will risk putting people with real thoughts and opinions at the reception desk instead of androids they control 100% (well we all know how this will go, democrats will put them there, then republicans will make a moral issue out of it,... lot's of running around) ? Heh... would you ?
Androids are also the ultimate defense against idiots coming through the door with a gun or a bomb or... they're a very good answer to terrorism.
Heh, there's a movie on youtube of an android explaining to a few reporters on a Tokyo roadshow : "I would make a better reporter because I work all day and all night, never getting tired, never requiring any pay, and can simply record my eyes" (she actually came up with most of this sentence herself, or so the video claims).
They didn't print it.
Besides, let's get real. Search for "android" or "actroid" on youtube, and you'll find yourself using the word "she" for those robot things (not many male androids for now). They can certainly be nice to talk to.
And there's been a study about human interaction that you might call a turing test with profound implications, actually little kids will gladly accept robots they can play with as their equals, as human, provided they exhibit certain (very, very limited) behavioral patterns. They will even try to "save their friend" by holding him/her up when his batteries run out, or yelling to the nurse that "their friend is not well". Often clearly expression how the nurse is "not nice" for turning him/her off.
In other words, in 10 years, the green nuts won't just be calling herding animals immoral, but programming (or God forbid, deactivating) a robot probably too.
Yes, of course. And half the population turn into idiots (male *and* female, counterintuitive but true) if confronted with a... well ehm... "desirable" female.
Seriously have you ever read alice transcripts from random people on the internet ? Even with only text "hey I'm a girl" as an introductory line and the conversation goes... let's call it "very smooth". At times, even with basic alice "psychologist" behavior you'd have to agree : alice is the more intelligent conversation partner.
In reality turing (even with androids, just in real life) test is where chess computers were before Kasparov's defeat : able to trivially beat all but trained humans (the terminators that would be indistinguishable from real humans at night, only alarming dogs, are very much within current technology, as long as you only require 2 hours or so of operation).
Yes androids look like moving plastic when you're 10 cm in front of their face. But from 2 meters distance I don't notice it even when I try to look for it. Yes even from 2 meters they look like they were polished for 5 hours, but then so does any women with what is considered normal amounts of makeup. You certainly wouldn't be able to tell the android from a woman (well, girl really) with a lot of makeup.
It's ridiculously clear from the video that the face was the "animated" bit.
I think you're overestimating yourself. I doubt a double-blind test (a turing test) would find this movie anywhere near "ridiculously" clearly falsified.
(I don't agree with the message of this blog, it's just the first google hit)
And if radioactive uranium isn't enough for you, Poseidon also stocks (massive quantities of) both Thorium and Radon (the only radioactive substance that has in history actually cause large amounts of radiation disease in humans).
I'm sure that's not all of the radioactivity that's stocked by our Tremletted friend, just the beginning (apparently some Israeli scientists think he's also stocking an element with atomic number 122, which is something no human has ever done)
Lithium 3 + Lithium 4... fusion... always raises the number of protons.
What you say makes little sense, the atomic number of the resulting element after fusion is higher. So Li3 + Li4 should give C7, which is a stable isotope.
It is, btw the conventi on to give the total number of nucleonic particles in the isotope number. So it's probably Li6 and Li7 you're talking about.
Really ? Just because it happened once does not make a pattern. Just because Germany fell...
It's true, obviously, that states may fall when they completely overstretch their supply lines, however at least some completed sometimes very extensive ethnic cleansing before their fall (including, I would say, the Nazis and especially the Communists, who succeeded in comitting ethnic cleansings that were many times greater than Hitler ever dreamed of. And now the Chinese are doing it again, in at least 2 locations, and to be honest, I don't doubt they're in reality ethnically cleansing more than just Nepal and Xinjang. Why don't you look up just how much their controlled territory expanded since they started ethnically cleansing ? I don't think you're going to want to be honest about it).
But especially bad in this department are the muslim ethnic cleansings, starting with the mainly Jewish arabs, followed by Christian arabs, but quicly moving on to the cleansing of black north africans (still going strong in darfur, called "jihad" by those who perpetrate the killings), or the same muslims' ethnic cleansings in India, which have resulted in pakistan and bangladesh.
But lots of nations knew a very effective way to prevent overstretching of lines. Pick on a single remote nation at a time, only maintaining one "true" logistical line, even if said line spans a great distance. Find out who your competitors are before they get close enough to overrun cities, and eradicate them. That's how the Roman Empire maintained itself over stretches of land that are beyond amazing for over 1500 years.
Others simply took their supply lines with them, cattle, grain, horses, the works. You probably know the names "Alexander the Great" and "Genghis Khan".
In fact, while VERY recent history (ie. America) seems to provide a limited counterexample, it seems to me that the great nations were overrun when they STOPPED their agressive expansionism and ethnic cleansings, and exactly because they stopped expanding. Certainly the western and eastern roman empire fell like this. But also Alexander the great. The Mongols. The Ottomans, the Mamluks,... The Hindu Kingdoms of India. The Buddhists of China. And now, it seems, the colonial nations (and the ex-colonies).
When examined honestly, history would seem to provide a very compelling argument to start ethnic cleansings of a humongous scale.
And to be honest, if you do believe in darwinism, what exactly did you expect history to provide ? Just because Christian ideals made America (itself a nearly homogenous nation, faith-wise) stop one or two ethnic cleansings (and aided a few others, like the ex-Ottoman Kosovar Albanians cleansing away Serbs).
Each of the named nations btw, lasted at least 500 years, and most 1000 years, which, need I really remind you, is at least double the time America has lasted thus far. I am 100% with you in hoping America has a longer life, but let's keep our egos in check : that's far from a certainty.
I wonder why people have so much trouble accepting that they're just those fish in the aquarium. I fear we're competing against demagogues who like to tell people they're "special", which tends to mean especially that no rules, not even the laws of nature, hold for them.
I seems everyone here thinks himself the keeper of the aquarium, for whom no rules hold. Everyone thinks they're God. This is even true, or even more true of people like Obama. They don't just lack humility, but lack the basic decency of not parading around their shame, making wild, totally off-the-map idiotic predictions and then denying they ever said one wrong word.
You know when McCain got my vote ? When he said "I've changed my mind, I was wrong" (was about oil drilling, and I don't even know I entirely agree with him about that, but for Obama there are only the no-drilling-never and let's-rip-open-the-entire-americas-and-destroy-everything-drilling, both of which are stupidities).
I just think you're lucky to have been born in a place which had very few people, and lots and lots of open spaces.
I did not.
Physical realities can be accepted without being consented to as just and good. When it rains, I build my family shelter;
If I do that here, that shelter will be thrown down for not complying with the (sometimes necessary, often not so necessary) building codes. Besides, there aren't any open spaces to build said shelter, I don't own one. and if I do beat the odds, and get one built, a mob will take it from me and my family if shelters are at a premium.
when it floods, I take my family to higher ground.
When it rains higher ground will have been conquered by idiot thugs long before I will get there. Therefore if I am to survive a real flood here I'll need to outsmart others. Higher ground is a death trap. To be honest I'd rather face rising waters.
At the higher ground, thieves, idiots and a mob to enforce idiotic rules await. Who knows, in a few dozen rules "idiotic rules" might mean sharia.
Don't get me wrong. I'd love to be in a situation where I would be able to take care of myself. But taking care of myself means first and foremost protection from the mobs that are everywhere here.
So what do you suggest I do ? Kill enough of the people around me ? And yet, for the moment I'm relatively comfortable.
And this is Europe. One thing is punished above all others : attempting to protect oneself from the mob. Therefore you can only do so in secret.
I do love them. But I'd have to take 50 calculators with me. I mean at least one with a big display, a basic scientific one, and one that can easily work with hex & binary, for starters. Add to that a good unit converter with a lot of tables built in.
You are missing the point : you think you're God. I'm not actually very religious so please bear with me.
There are collections of problems that have certain properties. If the problem of predicting would be linear ("solvable in linear time") that would already be too much for any technology or being inside the universe to handle.
If it were NP (and quantum mechanics is VERY NP, ie not linear, and not exponential, but even worse than that), then what real hope do we have ? It probably isn't possible to create enough computing capacity in the universe to calculate what a little rock would be doing even if we did know how.
You just think that your own capabilities include all that is theoretically possible, while in fact you are just like the rest of us : you're a little, tiny, dumb if not outright stupid, extremely limited and very, very weak human being. Just because something is theoretically possible does not mean you can do it. It is certainly theoretically possible to get you in orbit around proxima centauri, but that's never going to happen. And that problem is LOADS easier than predicting even a single human.
And to be honest, I don't really believe you're motivated by scientific interest or logical rigour in this question, you just try to make it look that way. You sound like someone looking for an excuse. A coward in other words.
So why don't you answer : exactly what in your life needs to be excused for ? Why don't you go out and find something worthwile to do, someone to ask for this forgiveness that you so desperately seek ?
But Obama reversed his position on booting being a necessary step for PC operation, for booting pc's is bad for global warming, therefore Obamanix will not have the option of creating a bootsector, nor will it come with one.
When I enquired about exactly how he used this empty black screen of his, I was called a racist, beat up, and thrown out of the building (from the third floor window).
Fortunately the massive quantities of hot air in the head of one of his former fans broke my fall. To those who weren't there it might seem that it'd be very hard for mere hot air to break a fall from a third floor window, however to those I would say that that depends on the quantity. Think big.
The rest of his fans don't care, after all, Obama promised Obamanix would come with Duke Nukem Forever pre-installed.
The distributions release date is said to coincide with Duke Nukem Forever's release date : the day after installing Obama in the white house and giving him the power of preventing a single word about the curious absense of said distribution being published, with laws that would let less bytes pass on *any* router than "prophets suck" articles can be found in this year's "taliban chronicles".
The problem is, obviously, that what you do affects others.
To give a stupid example. While you might not consent to being restricted where you throw your garbage (this would be a political position), your neighbor might not agree. Nor would anyone else.
Sorry but the only one who can give my consent is me,
Not good enough, the world need to remain liveable, with or without your consent, so your consent cannot be entirely yours. And if that means shooting you, I'm sure (esp. democrats) will be more than willing to pull the trigger.
I do also wonder what you will do if you don't consent to a real world fact, an "act of God" if you will. In essence what happens if you don't consent to the rain ?
Or if you don't consent to a dike breach & flood killing your family and carrying it away ?
(If you don't think a countryside of moderately armed natives can't hold off a foreign invasion, take a closer look at Vietnam or Iraq.)
This is only true if the invading force isn't willing/capable to just kill everyone. I obviously think it's great that America didn't just kill everyone in Iraq and Vietnam, but not everyone has the same decency.
And if you're a realist, America won the vietnam war against the Khmer Rouge, and then lost against the "democratic" party. We all know who won communists the right to kill 2 million people, and send another few millions to "reeducation camps", and his face wasn't yellow.
How exactly do you think Russia and China got the size they are today ? For the answer, might I refer you to this BBC article. Or just watch the news about Tibet.
This is only true if you assume free will to be inconsistent with fundamental unpredictability.
What exactly is the problem, if you simply require that free will is inconsistent with practical unpredictability ? Then free will would be perfectly consistent with even Newtonian physics.
To make a prediction 100% certain in Newtonian physics you'd have to make every measurement conceivable in a single instant. Otherwise, no matter how much data you bring into your simulation to predict, there'd always be the possibility of outside intervention (I'm not talking ghosts or aliens or God, but merely some guy, or even a single particle of dust that wasn't included in your simulation coming in and ruining your predictions).
Also you'd need "faster-than-realtime" simulation. Even if you could simulate the universe, unless you can do it faster than the real world does it, it will not yield any prediction.
There are lots of places for fundamental problems to manifest themselves, and we've certainly not looked everywhere for them. In fact I could name 10 fundamental problems with simulating even an ant according to newtonian physics.
In the case that, while the universe is fundamentally predictable, but not practically, only a being completely independant of our own universe would be able to predict anything 100% certain. Or if you like it stated otherwise, only God would know the future for certain, everyone else merely has a bad (or good) guess, but nothing more.
That's a very inglamorous way of looking at the universe, and at our own limitations, but it does seem to have realiy on it's side.
Therefore, even in Newton's world, only God knows the future, everyone else merely has a guess.
Human free will might be predictable for God, but not for other humans (this means that it's theoretically predictable, if you had access to the full starting state of the universe, but since no-one has & no-one ever will, it's not doable).
Or it might be the case that it's infeasible to predict the evolution of the universe faster than real-time. Even if you knew the starting state of the universe, that information would not help you predict anything unless you had a computer that could simulate more than 1s of "universe evolution" in 1s. This is an unsolved problem, since that computer would have to simulate itself, faster than it can run. (ie. 100% certain predictions of the future are by themselves paradoxes, since they'd have to incorporate themselves.
Say, for example "global warming's going to kill us all !" were a prediction, we take heed, and prevent it. That act, obviously, makes the prediction wrong, since the prediction caused a reaction that prevented it from coming true. Any 100% certain prediction has that problem.
The randomness in quantum mechanics (which is an assumption of the theory, not a proven fact) *might* prevent that problem from occuring in quantum mechanics, but it might not, it's not proven either way. It is also not proven that to aviod paradoxes you require fundamental unpredictability either, so lots of avenues still open (you'd have to prove that human beings, or at least something (God ?) is "rational" in some way to prove that rational unpredictability is required, it might just as well be the case that humans will not prevent certain calamities, no matter how well informed we are about them, in fact it's happened lots of times in history, for example there is every indication that the Inuit are perfectly aware what is happening to them, yet it does not seem to slow down their demise, but the same could be said about quite a few people that don't exist anymore, like the Inca's or the Mayans, they knew perfectly well what was happening to them, and they knew what was needed to prevent it from killing them, they had the opportunity to prevent their own demise... and they didn't).
However that prediction-paradox is only a problem for people with their heads extremely high up in the clouds ("philosophers", and other idiots) since anything resembling the minimum required technology does not currently exist, nor does it seem possible to create a technology like that (except to said airheads).
Even if newtonian mechanics were 100% true, it would not today be feasible to predict the actions of a single human. We're slowly getting close to predicting, (using less than even newtonian-style physics, just using gravity-less balls and valency electrons, so by this measurement that would be, what "really inaccurate" ?), the actions of a single bacterium, but we're not quite there yet. And even if we were there, that ability is useless until we can do it faster than real-time (ie simulate more than 1s in 1s "real time"), except for study of general principles of course.
Humans, with 100 billion brain cells, have a few hundred years even if Moore's law is upheld for its entire duration, and there would be no fundamental unpredictability *AND* there would be a way to make, in a single instant, every measurement conceivable (that last one is a requirement for making even newtonian predictions)
Slashdot Mirror
What about the fact that OS X comes with a free copy of the Developer Tools
Oh is that included with the $1500 and-rougly-equivalent-to-a-$600-windows-laptop hardware ? Great.
and the fact that Linux comes with free compilers (or you can easily obtain said free compilers)?
I do know how to use those compilers. Took 3 years of my life to learn to use them properly. That's also a cost.
Is Visual Basic free? I seem to remember that it is not, but could someone who knows for sure let us know?
Yep. Google "express edition"
I know that if I wanted to learn programming, I'd rather do it using a system that uses standardized file formats, has a standardized UI and clear UI guidelines -- and doesn't charge an arm and a leg for the tools needed to do the actual programming.
This is not true at all. Those "standardized" file formats are in complexity at least a few years of what a 13-year old beginning programmer is capable of handling.
That standardized UI is not something you want to really take into account the first, oh, 5 years that you program. And for games you don't want to take it into account - ever. The overriding demand a beginning programmer has on the gui is that the gui has to be done in 5 minutes (max). Visual studio can do this. Linux can not (even though kdevelop is a good attempt, but let's face facts, about equal to something like borland pascal 7.0), xcode is at about the level of an ancient version visual basic (which is better than borland pascal).
The best tools in the UI department for quick development, let's be fair, are in visual studio. And that tool is free. Xcode is only free if you pay the hefty premium for the apple hardware.
What makes windows the ideal platform for beginning (ie. not yet as controlled or smart, certainly not capable of applying rigorous methods to software development) is exactly the difference between windows and macs.
Windows : ... do it. Nobody's holding you back.
-> a giant utterly cacophonic marketplace. It's everywhere. It's not all that nice to look at, but you'll find everything you ever dreamed of somewhere. If you want to set up shop, you just
Mac :
-> a central shiny ivory tower, sitting on a disc formed by beautiful, and capable hardware, that's just a tad expensive, with lots of guns guarding the entrance. If you attempt to actually compete with the "great minds" inside of the tower, you will find you applications unceremoniously thrown off the edge of the disc. Every device will start refusing it, without the users having any say in it. Of course, this exact process is what keeps the surface of the disc so clean, which is exactly what you admire about apple.
Apple is the company that's going to implement the controls that "the right to read" from Stallman was talking about. Microsoft would add them to a huge marketplace, with lots of stuff inside the controls, and lots more stuff outside of the controls.
And apple can't relent. Not now, not ever. Because an apple that relents and lets developers do as they please, would quickly become another windows. With dozens upon dozens of UI standards, languages that "mostly" communicate and thousands of never-reused application formats. In other words, a Mac OS X that runs on anything, allows developers whatever they want would quickly become ... windows.
But of course, that's reality. Not something you will find much in "progressive" circles.
I'm a developer, who actually analyses & writes code for a living. Code that actually has to work (actually I'm a consultant, currently developing for a bank, the current instance of the database that my code has to work against was, I'm not kidding, started before I was born. And it's still running. How do you query it ? You take a terminal change "a part of the 80x25 screen" (I'm not kidding), then write "+SAM" and it executes everything above the current cursor and changes the text into the response. Now imagine doing that from C++ code. That's what "it needs to work" means. Oh btw, this method of working is, I kid you not, called "EASY". And apparently, compared to it's predecessor, it is easy).
Let's say I want to start apple programming, let's evaluate what I need :
-> an apple desktop or laptop. The bottom end or second-hand simply won't run os X (or won't run it acceptably or for very long), we're talking at least $1300 to $1800. I can only buy this directly from apple, no competition or alternatives exist here
-> a membership of apple's "development club" : $99 (a month I believe)
-> I need to get my software into the apple stores and into shop.apple.com, because there is no other channel. And if it doesn't follow apple's interpretation of the "user interface guidelines" (which quicktime violates rougly in the manner a fat pakistani violates a goat) it's just not going to happen
-> I need to learn & develop my software in objective C. Again, there is no (useable) alternative with support from apple. To add insult to injury, nobody else uses objC (well I believe there is a linux desktop environment in the language).
On windows ... buy myself a $499 laptop (which will more than do, and come with windows). I pick whatever company I want (one that's close for example) to sell it to me. I get a beer the next time I see the guy selling it to me in a cafe. I download visual studio express (which knocks the socks of xcode, but I will fully admit xcode is useable), which let's me develop, fully supported (and even free) in C#, C++, Basic, F#, Python (after a few downloads from microsoft reasearch). I download another dev environment, eclipse (by ibm) or one by sun, and I develop in java. I download another and develop in pascal. Support is available, even from microsoft, for all of these languages, and they're open and widely used, including used by microsoft.
I go to the nearest company, and they have 10 programs they're willing to pay me to develop. I go to the nearest shop, even did this with a supermarket once, and they're willing to sell boxed versions of software I wrote. There are thousands of places like that within a kilometer of where I live.
And you're seriously wondering why microsoft wins ?
You are suffering from PDD, in that you're a user, and you're blaming me for not going to 10x more trouble to develop for mac os x for half the price, because "it looks better".
But we all know the real deal : you want me to jump through 10 times more hoops to sell applications to you, and I will ask you 10 times the price of a windows application.
Of course, you consider this unfair.
To that, I will respond with a fully meant, eloquently put and most satisfying "fuck you". Then you do not buy, I cut my losses and go back to windows. Cya !
Is this a joke ? You're not seriously wondering why the radically different skill that writing good software requires results in applications working according to, let's say, different philosophies ?
The only thing right about apple's interface is the consistency. Can you point me to a way to use anything OTHER THAN ITUNES to get an mp3 playing on my iphone ? Apple is "nice" as long as you toe the line. The only thing apple does a little bit right is consistency across it's interface. Mac OS is impractical, paternalistic in the extreme, and pushy as hell ... and yes it's a bit nicer to look at than linux or windows.
This consistency is pushed onto software developers from apple headquarters with, to say the very least, an iron fist.
While this made users initially happy, for obvious reasons developers didn't like it. They hated apple, from the beginning, and the hate only grew stronger. So there weren't all that many developers, and therefore not too many apps for apple.
And then microsoft came along. And gave developers visual basic. Easy to use, fast to get results, but to say the least, not perfect. Obviously given that you "just want to develop something", you "want to give developing a try" you're (and this is still true) going to do it on windows. This was true long before windows became anywhere near dominant in the marketplace.
Therefore there's MANY more apps for windows. And before that all applications ran on DOS. Why ? Because that was cheap and easy. Getting an app to run on mac os/iphone is both expensive, difficult, and you have to pass apple's "commisar". DOS/Windows doesn't force stuff onto you. I'm going to get a lot of flak for this post, but just look at the exact same situation :
matlab vs mathematica. Mathematica is beautiful. Nicely built, nice to look at. And a veritable thumbscrew to develop in, just like mac os. Matlab gets results, and is beyond ugly in design. It's literally a deep dark pit in the ground and you can see a faint red light glowing at the bottom. Yet nearly everyone jumps in the matlab pit.
The exact same situation you have with iphone versus windows smartphones. Why do you only have skype on windows smartphones ? Why do you only have good calculators on windows smartphones ? Why do you only have on windows smartphones ... no developer keys, and no restrictions on what you can put on devices. It gets worse. The physical restrictions of windows mobile are MUCH, MUCH worse than those of the iphone. Apple has loosened up a tiny little bit. But that loosening is costing the iphone in consistency, and a lot. It's loosing it's beauty, but it works better.
In the end it's similar to communism/socialism versus capitalism : central planning/forced consistency looks good, and IF you like the guy that's currently at the wheel it may work for a little while. Everything may not work, but at least it looks like it actually fits. Capitalism is a thousand trumpets blowing completely out of sync. But when you have to live with it central planning/communism/socialism is a death knell, and capitalism gets things done (1000 ways will fail, 1 will work, that's the way of capitalism. The 1000 that fail are not a pretty picture, and the one that does gets "all the glory". Communism/socialism/central planning only tries one way, or maybe a few. If those few tries fail ... then it's over. No matter how many people know how to solve the problem, nobody else gets to try)
You see that with the olympics in China : the top layer looks beautiful. Lots of nice girls, beautiful city (for the moment). But ... it's being forced onto the people at gunpoint. And apple's "easy to use more attractive software" is also being forced at (the proverbial cryptographical-development-keys) gunpoint. It looks nice if the person holding the gun is trying to impress you. It does not look good AT ALL if you're on the other end of the gun.
And developers, the people you as a user depend on, are on the barrel end of apple's gun.
Who do you think is going to win after the "oooh" factor wears off ? Apple is currently a blip, a drop on a hot plate. It will shine ... for a short while. Then *poof*.
Well it's easier to "bend the truth a bit" when "changing climate". After all the EU's policy is at best a bad joke too, and it's heralded as the second coming on just about every (esp. left-leaning) press everywhere.
After all co2 reduction goals are set for 2050, at which time we'll have about 15% of the oil we now have, so we're pretty much guaranteed to succeed in reducing co2 output by 85% by then, without lifting a finger.
But some reduction is a "fantastic leap forward" according to BOTH Obama and McCain.
Slashdot ... always respecting freedom of expression.
Well, except yours obviously. You don't agree with the commisar (these days the commissar is "Barack Hussein Obama"). Besides ... anti-China protests are dying. China doesn't listen and is generally too scary. So they get to massacre (hey so do the muslims, who even worship a massacring child-rapist).
As the Barack said : let's just say the UN needs to put a stop to this ! ... I respectfully request you leave, sir, through the window. The top floor window. Yep you have to, Chinese tradition.
Sane individual : China has a veto to any UN decision
Barack, and other progressives : that guy is not toeing the party line ! Everybody knows just how much we find it necessary to stop other socialists from killing indiscriminately
Meanwhile some chinese guy : *pang*
Some Tibettan : *gurgle* aargh
(sorry but after the "oh no the police attempted to break the privacy of a child molester"-post I think this is most justified, besides the label "troll" just means you're opressing me ! whei !)
Well polygamhy has one obvious consequence, I wonder why no-one mentioned it before. There are about as many men as women, certainly at the age where they normally marry.
Therefore even minimal polygamy must mean that a lot of men end up without any woman at all. And not voluntary at all.
And if you think this makes women better off, polygamy makes them replaceable. Easily replaceable I might add.
It also necessitates guarding said women. After all, a lot of very young men will be without options for getting any woman at all.
Perhaps that's why they keep blowing themselves up ?
In islam you're even allowed to fuck 6-year olds (provided you pay for them first).
Apparently there's this "prophet" guy who did it first, so they must all imitate him.
Apparently even your own daughter, when she's like a month old. But that's only in Iran (after all this ayatollah Khomeini, who obviously has nothing to do with religion, right ? did it. The girl you ask ? Still locked up in "psychological evaluation").
there are 2 witnesses testifying against him ... please. Let's not kid ourselves. (and yes he needs to be brought before a judge, but innocent ? Let's get real)
But again, it's for a judge to decide, in public.
The communist party is promoting "big business" ? Many democrats will get a heart attack. However it's obvious that this must be so.
Obviously it's true. Right now America's medicine is "big business", so the government should step in. Of course, after that, the "business" part of it becomes about 20 times bigger.
Government has all the disadvantages of big business, and they actually have guns (as opposed to mere allegations of them having guns like we see now).
And the evil directors won't just have "bought" the government, they will BE the government. You know, guns, cannons, thermonuclear fucking missiles, judges and all. They'll all be one single organisation, without any alternative choice.
Thereby guaranteeing, with utter and complete certainty that if a health care company fucks with you, there is nothing at all the government will do for you. Unlike now.
You know, I LIKE clinton (or at least, I like her better than someone else, perhaps it's racist, but ...), but she really needs to turn around on this issue.
A lot of slashdotters want to be permitted to violate a number of laws, after all "they know better" (and ... benefit themselves from those crimes, but that has nothing to do with it at all), so obviously they side with the criminal.
And yes they have an excuse in this case. But that's for show. They don't want to be convicted for not buying their own entertainment, for not abiding by software licences they use (however they *do* want to force others to abide by the GPL, using financial and even criminal punishments for violations).
And ultimately, torture doesn't work. Eventually, a society that violates basic human rights so blatantly will fall,
There isn't a single nation in this world, except potentially the US that respects the "sanctity" of computer passwords.
Also keep in mind most people don't have their data on their own disk, in which case every single country, including the US and every other country allows the prosecution to access their online (or otherwise, e.g. work) accounts.
So "torture doesn't work" and "will fall" seem a bit over-the-top, don't you think ? EVERY society allows this sort of "torture", including the US.
Never mind that your diluting the meaning of the word "torture" beyond measure. This is not torture at all, a much more accurate description would be "not respecting privacy of a criminal suspect". Causing direct and extreme physical or psychological pain in order to extract information is torture :
Obviously what this lawsuit would do if successful, imprison the suspect because he refuses to prove his innocence when serious and confirmed allegations are made against him by multiple witnesses, is quite a normal procedure, not torture, and practiced by every nation on this earth. If you're caught with your pants down in kindergarten, get seen by 2 police officers, and then "refuse to explain your lawful conduct" obviously you're going away for a long time (rightly). Despite being potentially innocent.
Of course it gets worse than that. Torture obviously does work, in that it gets subjects to say something. Not necessarily the truth, obviously, but it does extract confessions. So what use are confessions that you aren't sure are the truth ? At first sight they're worthless. Except, when you have 2 different perspectives extracted with torture, you can compare them, and "ask" who lied, work your way toward the truth.
Now that is very, very effective.
and often (but not always) the perpetrators end up on the other end of the see-saw.Then, it becomes harder to find people who will obey orders to torture.
Really ? Call me when Omar Al Bashir, or the president of China (two real torturing bastards, one in the name of islam, one in the name of communism) get aprehended. Guess this falls under your "not always". I'd say it's much closer to "never".
It also seems to me that both of these bastards are not exactly having problems finding either muslims to kill/torture/enslave/rape black people or chinese to kill/torture/abort other chinese. Now this too has a long history, and many, many, many regimes had no problem finding a most substantial amount of people willing to torture. Nor are many other regimes, such as, oh say every last islamic regime, having much trouble finding muslims to kill homosexuals.
In history it gets worse : clearly there were enough russians to keep slaughtering people until 30 MILLION people were dead. Mao found people to kill 100 MILLION, and muslims managed to kill (at least) 300 million hindus to create the asian muslim countries. In Sudan, said muslims are still killing to expand their territory.
The Russians that comitted that massacre didn't fell, at least not during their lifetime, neither did Mao, and the muslims murdered their way into the majority of some 67 (!) countries.
Is this what you call "failure", what you call for them to "fall" ?
Evil does not fall by itself, it takes a fight, weapons and most of all, sacrifices by people who try to do good (*AND* realise that 100% good is not a reasonable demand to make of someone, aspiring to do good, and never doing worse than the enemy, that perhaps).
We in America will eventually learn that it was a huge mistake to forsake our principles and become a torture regime.
I suppose all these other countries, all 296 of them will learn it sooner than America then. Heh. Some of them are older than America, and actually torture people.
But, I can only hope that Bush, Cheney, Gonzalez and others will face the music. There'
Well for functions where an ideal body is required or even a positive and little creative ability is required, quite frankly ... yes. Or where a non-human body would be a handy thing to have, like when lifting 500 pound crates.
Porn, commercials, promotion, secretary work, tourguides, reporters, "normal" soldiering or policing ... would be easily handled by an android that literally, is a perfect woman/man. Never says no, does exactly what you want her to, looks perfectly (or not, whatever you require) as you want every day ...
Furthermore androids will soon enough start to outperform "idiot" humans in the thinking department and they have a huge advantage in the workplace : they're more efficient (human body is about 3/100000 efficient, non-vegetarians are worse, not very hard to beat that using electrical motors that can easily be 90% efficient), require no pay, and they can switch bodies when the task at hand requires it. Cleaning tiny ducts will pretty soon be handled exclusively by robots. So will building construction. And if Japan is any indication, they will start maintaining the street without human intervention before 10 years pass.
Do you think companies (or even things like Obama's campaign) will risk putting people with real thoughts and opinions at the reception desk instead of androids they control 100% (well we all know how this will go, democrats will put them there, then republicans will make a moral issue out of it, ... lot's of running around) ? Heh ... would you ?
Androids are also the ultimate defense against idiots coming through the door with a gun or a bomb or ... they're a very good answer to terrorism.
Heh, there's a movie on youtube of an android explaining to a few reporters on a Tokyo roadshow : "I would make a better reporter because I work all day and all night, never getting tired, never requiring any pay, and can simply record my eyes" (she actually came up with most of this sentence herself, or so the video claims).
They didn't print it.
Besides, let's get real. Search for "android" or "actroid" on youtube, and you'll find yourself using the word "she" for those robot things (not many male androids for now). They can certainly be nice to talk to.
And there's been a study about human interaction that you might call a turing test with profound implications, actually little kids will gladly accept robots they can play with as their equals, as human, provided they exhibit certain (very, very limited) behavioral patterns. They will even try to "save their friend" by holding him/her up when his batteries run out, or yelling to the nurse that "their friend is not well". Often clearly expression how the nurse is "not nice" for turning him/her off.
In other words, in 10 years, the green nuts won't just be calling herding animals immoral, but programming (or God forbid, deactivating) a robot probably too.
Is a Turing test valid if the human is an idiot?
Yes, of course. And half the population turn into idiots (male *and* female, counterintuitive but true) if confronted with a ... well ehm ... "desirable" female.
Seriously have you ever read alice transcripts from random people on the internet ? Even with only text "hey I'm a girl" as an introductory line and the conversation goes ... let's call it "very smooth". At times, even with basic alice "psychologist" behavior you'd have to agree : alice is the more intelligent conversation partner.
In reality turing (even with androids, just in real life) test is where chess computers were before Kasparov's defeat : able to trivially beat all but trained humans (the terminators that would be indistinguishable from real humans at night, only alarming dogs, are very much within current technology, as long as you only require 2 hours or so of operation).
Yes androids look like moving plastic when you're 10 cm in front of their face. But from 2 meters distance I don't notice it even when I try to look for it. Yes even from 2 meters they look like they were polished for 5 hours, but then so does any women with what is considered normal amounts of makeup. You certainly wouldn't be able to tell the android from a woman (well, girl really) with a lot of makeup.
It's ridiculously clear from the video that the face was the "animated" bit.
I think you're overestimating yourself. I doubt a double-blind test (a turing test) would find this movie anywhere near "ridiculously" clearly falsified.
Actually most of the mineable Uranium is already in normal seawater. It's even in the rain !
http://peakoildebunked.blogspot.com/2006/01/207-uranium-from-seawater-part-1.html
(I don't agree with the message of this blog, it's just the first google hit)
And if radioactive uranium isn't enough for you, Poseidon also stocks (massive quantities of) both Thorium and Radon (the only radioactive substance that has in history actually cause large amounts of radiation disease in humans).
I'm sure that's not all of the radioactivity that's stocked by our Tremletted friend, just the beginning (apparently some Israeli scientists think he's also stocking an element with atomic number 122, which is something no human has ever done)
Lithium 3 + Lithium 4 ... fusion ... always raises the number of protons.
What you say makes little sense, the atomic number of the resulting element after fusion is higher. So Li3 + Li4 should give C7, which is a stable isotope.
It is, btw the conventi on to give the total number of nucleonic particles in the isotope number. So it's probably Li6 and Li7 you're talking about.
You're seriously going to claim a hp50g is useable as either an ebook reader or a binary calculator ?
I do hope you're joking.
Really ? Just because it happened once does not make a pattern. Just because Germany fell ...
It's true, obviously, that states may fall when they completely overstretch their supply lines, however at least some completed sometimes very extensive ethnic cleansing before their fall (including, I would say, the Nazis and especially the Communists, who succeeded in comitting ethnic cleansings that were many times greater than Hitler ever dreamed of. And now the Chinese are doing it again, in at least 2 locations, and to be honest, I don't doubt they're in reality ethnically cleansing more than just Nepal and Xinjang. Why don't you look up just how much their controlled territory expanded since they started ethnically cleansing ? I don't think you're going to want to be honest about it).
But especially bad in this department are the muslim ethnic cleansings, starting with the mainly Jewish arabs, followed by Christian arabs, but quicly moving on to the cleansing of black north africans (still going strong in darfur, called "jihad" by those who perpetrate the killings), or the same muslims' ethnic cleansings in India, which have resulted in pakistan and bangladesh.
But lots of nations knew a very effective way to prevent overstretching of lines. Pick on a single remote nation at a time, only maintaining one "true" logistical line, even if said line spans a great distance. Find out who your competitors are before they get close enough to overrun cities, and eradicate them. That's how the Roman Empire maintained itself over stretches of land that are beyond amazing for over 1500 years.
Others simply took their supply lines with them, cattle, grain, horses, the works. You probably know the names "Alexander the Great" and "Genghis Khan".
In fact, while VERY recent history (ie. America) seems to provide a limited counterexample, it seems to me that the great nations were overrun when they STOPPED their agressive expansionism and ethnic cleansings, and exactly because they stopped expanding. Certainly the western and eastern roman empire fell like this. But also Alexander the great. The Mongols. The Ottomans, the Mamluks, ... The Hindu Kingdoms of India. The Buddhists of China. And now, it seems, the colonial nations (and the ex-colonies).
When examined honestly, history would seem to provide a very compelling argument to start ethnic cleansings of a humongous scale.
And to be honest, if you do believe in darwinism, what exactly did you expect history to provide ? Just because Christian ideals made America (itself a nearly homogenous nation, faith-wise) stop one or two ethnic cleansings (and aided a few others, like the ex-Ottoman Kosovar Albanians cleansing away Serbs).
Each of the named nations btw, lasted at least 500 years, and most 1000 years, which, need I really remind you, is at least double the time America has lasted thus far. I am 100% with you in hoping America has a longer life, but let's keep our egos in check : that's far from a certainty.
I wonder why people have so much trouble accepting that they're just those fish in the aquarium. I fear we're competing against demagogues who like to tell people they're "special", which tends to mean especially that no rules, not even the laws of nature, hold for them.
I seems everyone here thinks himself the keeper of the aquarium, for whom no rules hold. Everyone thinks they're God. This is even true, or even more true of people like Obama. They don't just lack humility, but lack the basic decency of not parading around their shame, making wild, totally off-the-map idiotic predictions and then denying they ever said one wrong word.
You know when McCain got my vote ? When he said "I've changed my mind, I was wrong" (was about oil drilling, and I don't even know I entirely agree with him about that, but for Obama there are only the no-drilling-never and let's-rip-open-the-entire-americas-and-destroy-everything-drilling, both of which are stupidities).
I just think you're lucky to have been born in a place which had very few people, and lots and lots of open spaces.
I did not.
Physical realities can be accepted without being consented to as just and good. When it rains, I build my family shelter;
If I do that here, that shelter will be thrown down for not complying with the (sometimes necessary, often not so necessary) building codes. Besides, there aren't any open spaces to build said shelter, I don't own one. and if I do beat the odds, and get one built, a mob will take it from me and my family if shelters are at a premium.
when it floods, I take my family to higher ground.
When it rains higher ground will have been conquered by idiot thugs long before I will get there. Therefore if I am to survive a real flood here I'll need to outsmart others. Higher ground is a death trap. To be honest I'd rather face rising waters.
At the higher ground, thieves, idiots and a mob to enforce idiotic rules await. Who knows, in a few dozen rules "idiotic rules" might mean sharia.
Don't get me wrong. I'd love to be in a situation where I would be able to take care of myself. But taking care of myself means first and foremost protection from the mobs that are everywhere here.
So what do you suggest I do ? Kill enough of the people around me ? And yet, for the moment I'm relatively comfortable.
And this is Europe. One thing is punished above all others : attempting to protect oneself from the mob. Therefore you can only do so in secret.
I do love them. But I'd have to take 50 calculators with me. I mean at least one with a big display, a basic scientific one, and one that can easily work with hex & binary, for starters. Add to that a good unit converter with a lot of tables built in.
And an ebook reader.
You are missing the point : you think you're God. I'm not actually very religious so please bear with me.
There are collections of problems that have certain properties. If the problem of predicting would be linear ("solvable in linear time") that would already be too much for any technology or being inside the universe to handle.
If it were NP (and quantum mechanics is VERY NP, ie not linear, and not exponential, but even worse than that), then what real hope do we have ? It probably isn't possible to create enough computing capacity in the universe to calculate what a little rock would be doing even if we did know how.
You just think that your own capabilities include all that is theoretically possible, while in fact you are just like the rest of us : you're a little, tiny, dumb if not outright stupid, extremely limited and very, very weak human being. Just because something is theoretically possible does not mean you can do it. It is certainly theoretically possible to get you in orbit around proxima centauri, but that's never going to happen. And that problem is LOADS easier than predicting even a single human.
And to be honest, I don't really believe you're motivated by scientific interest or logical rigour in this question, you just try to make it look that way. You sound like someone looking for an excuse. A coward in other words.
So why don't you answer : exactly what in your life needs to be excused for ? Why don't you go out and find something worthwile to do, someone to ask for this forgiveness that you so desperately seek ?
But Obama reversed his position on booting being a necessary step for PC operation, for booting pc's is bad for global warming, therefore Obamanix will not have the option of creating a bootsector, nor will it come with one.
When I enquired about exactly how he used this empty black screen of his, I was called a racist, beat up, and thrown out of the building (from the third floor window).
Fortunately the massive quantities of hot air in the head of one of his former fans broke my fall. To those who weren't there it might seem that it'd be very hard for mere hot air to break a fall from a third floor window, however to those I would say that that depends on the quantity. Think big.
The rest of his fans don't care, after all, Obama promised Obamanix would come with Duke Nukem Forever pre-installed.
The distributions release date is said to coincide with Duke Nukem Forever's release date : the day after installing Obama in the white house and giving him the power of preventing a single word about the curious absense of said distribution being published, with laws that would let less bytes pass on *any* router than "prophets suck" articles can be found in this year's "taliban chronicles".
The problem is, obviously, that what you do affects others.
To give a stupid example. While you might not consent to being restricted where you throw your garbage (this would be a political position), your neighbor might not agree. Nor would anyone else.
Sorry but the only one who can give my consent is me,
Not good enough, the world need to remain liveable, with or without your consent, so your consent cannot be entirely yours. And if that means shooting you, I'm sure (esp. democrats) will be more than willing to pull the trigger.
I do also wonder what you will do if you don't consent to a real world fact, an "act of God" if you will. In essence what happens if you don't consent to the rain ?
Or if you don't consent to a dike breach & flood killing your family and carrying it away ?
(If you don't think a countryside of moderately armed natives can't hold off a foreign invasion, take a closer look at Vietnam or Iraq.)
This is only true if the invading force isn't willing/capable to just kill everyone. I obviously think it's great that America didn't just kill everyone in Iraq and Vietnam, but not everyone has the same decency.
And if you're a realist, America won the vietnam war against the Khmer Rouge, and then lost against the "democratic" party. We all know who won communists the right to kill 2 million people, and send another few millions to "reeducation camps", and his face wasn't yellow.
How exactly do you think Russia and China got the size they are today ? For the answer, might I refer you to this BBC article. Or just watch the news about Tibet.
This is only true if you assume free will to be inconsistent with fundamental unpredictability.
What exactly is the problem, if you simply require that free will is inconsistent with practical unpredictability ? Then free will would be perfectly consistent with even Newtonian physics.
To make a prediction 100% certain in Newtonian physics you'd have to make every measurement conceivable in a single instant. Otherwise, no matter how much data you bring into your simulation to predict, there'd always be the possibility of outside intervention (I'm not talking ghosts or aliens or God, but merely some guy, or even a single particle of dust that wasn't included in your simulation coming in and ruining your predictions).
Also you'd need "faster-than-realtime" simulation. Even if you could simulate the universe, unless you can do it faster than the real world does it, it will not yield any prediction.
There are lots of places for fundamental problems to manifest themselves, and we've certainly not looked everywhere for them. In fact I could name 10 fundamental problems with simulating even an ant according to newtonian physics.
In the case that, while the universe is fundamentally predictable, but not practically, only a being completely independant of our own universe would be able to predict anything 100% certain. Or if you like it stated otherwise, only God would know the future for certain, everyone else merely has a bad (or good) guess, but nothing more.
That's a very inglamorous way of looking at the universe, and at our own limitations, but it does seem to have realiy on it's side.
Therefore, even in Newton's world, only God knows the future, everyone else merely has a guess.
Human free will might be predictable for God, but not for other humans (this means that it's theoretically predictable, if you had access to the full starting state of the universe, but since no-one has & no-one ever will, it's not doable).
Or it might be the case that it's infeasible to predict the evolution of the universe faster than real-time. Even if you knew the starting state of the universe, that information would not help you predict anything unless you had a computer that could simulate more than 1s of "universe evolution" in 1s. This is an unsolved problem, since that computer would have to simulate itself, faster than it can run. (ie. 100% certain predictions of the future are by themselves paradoxes, since they'd have to incorporate themselves.
Say, for example "global warming's going to kill us all !" were a prediction, we take heed, and prevent it. That act, obviously, makes the prediction wrong, since the prediction caused a reaction that prevented it from coming true. Any 100% certain prediction has that problem.
The randomness in quantum mechanics (which is an assumption of the theory, not a proven fact) *might* prevent that problem from occuring in quantum mechanics, but it might not, it's not proven either way. It is also not proven that to aviod paradoxes you require fundamental unpredictability either, so lots of avenues still open (you'd have to prove that human beings, or at least something (God ?) is "rational" in some way to prove that rational unpredictability is required, it might just as well be the case that humans will not prevent certain calamities, no matter how well informed we are about them, in fact it's happened lots of times in history, for example there is every indication that the Inuit are perfectly aware what is happening to them, yet it does not seem to slow down their demise, but the same could be said about quite a few people that don't exist anymore, like the Inca's or the Mayans, they knew perfectly well what was happening to them, and they knew what was needed to prevent it from killing them, they had the opportunity to prevent their own demise ... and they didn't).
However that prediction-paradox is only a problem for people with their heads extremely high up in the clouds ("philosophers", and other idiots) since anything resembling the minimum required technology does not currently exist, nor does it seem possible to create a technology like that (except to said airheads).
Even if newtonian mechanics were 100% true, it would not today be feasible to predict the actions of a single human. We're slowly getting close to predicting, (using less than even newtonian-style physics, just using gravity-less balls and valency electrons, so by this measurement that would be, what "really inaccurate" ?), the actions of a single bacterium, but we're not quite there yet. And even if we were there, that ability is useless until we can do it faster than real-time (ie simulate more than 1s in 1s "real time"), except for study of general principles of course.
Humans, with 100 billion brain cells, have a few hundred years even if Moore's law is upheld for its entire duration, and there would be no fundamental unpredictability *AND* there would be a way to make, in a single instant, every measurement conceivable (that last one is a requirement for making even newtonian predictions)