They had laptops or typewriters with function and modifier keys in the 19th century?
Of course they did! How else do you think they were able to write the stories about how Ford started mass-producing flying horseless carriages or the first Montgolfier balloon to actually circumnavigate the moon. My great-great-grandparents watched it as it happened on their coal-powered TeleStereopticon. If you don't believe it, you can always search for the story on the aethernet with your Difference Engine. Just goolgol for it.
It isn't necessarily the "impact" factor but the fact that no one expected it.
Actually, most people were probably surprised that he lasted as long as he did. With body parts falling off or changing colour, he was obviously WAY past his "best before" date.
That he died of a heart attack is just so... mundane... you'd expect it to be something like an angry parent or slipping off a balcony or a hyperbaric chamber malfunction or something involving Bubbles, a rope, and a closet.
The guy could sing and dance, and now he's dead. Turn the page, y'all. There are hella more important things to search for.
The "attack" was just millions saying "I have no life, you insensitive clod!"
Google should have returned a custom error page for Michael Jackson searches - either Error 301: Moved Permanently, or Error 410: Gone would have been fine, accompanied by a "Resource Expired: Beat It!" message.
Good catch - thank you. Even though it doesn't negate the argument (Oz still spends more on education than military), it does "tighten the gap". I guess I made a transcription error - it certainly wasn't intentional.
And as I point out, all such objects DO have a time component.
Also, unlike "metres", since a gigaFLOP requires that something actually be executed (an action performed, done, or carried out from start to finish), you can't have a FLOP w/o time. A FLOP isn't a discrete object or thing, it's an action. You can't "have" a gigaFLOP, you can only "do" a gigFLOP. Sort of like you can't "have" a push-up, you can only "do" it. You can't wrap a gigaFLOP up in nice paper and send it with a gift card...
But it's all nit-picking anyway... I thought the joke wasn't *that* bad (I've done better, I've done worse, try the fish:-)
This still doesn't change the fact that all those measurements of performance (and even your current reply) have time as a component. Measuring computer performance requires, even in your latest example a (operation)/s.
The context of the article (supercomputer with specific performance) and my joke (changing the denominator to achieve the desired result) also make it clear that we're measuring performance with a time component.
Also, even a single FLOP has a time component. Nothing happens instantaneously. All actions require time in which to execute. Here are several different ways to look at it, all with the same result.
Let's invoke a relative of the paradox of Zeno. Without some time component, you can't have any way of differentiating one instructions' execution from another - so you can't measure or even posit the existence of more than one FLOP without a time component somewhere, even if only as a hidden or assumed variable. cpu executes instruction. then at some future time, it executes another instruction. Now, remove the "at some future time" - how is any observer to know that they're not observing the same instruction? You can't "prove" the existence of more than that one FLOP without invoking time and duration.
If they're executing on less than (1 billion cpus)/(number of simultaneous floating point instructions each cpu can execute), you can't "have" a billion FLOPS. Any snapshot will show a certain number of FLOPS being executed - the others are gone or not yet there. So a gigaflop, unless it's being simultaneously executed on such a large machine, definitely has a time dimension that extends beyond the duration of the execution of one FLOP.
Lets further simplify - again, since the execution of the instruction is not instantaneous, each FLOP definitely has a time component, just like every other event in this universe. It has a start and an end. Just like I have 5 cookies. Duration (time) is implicit in the act of my "having" 5 cookies. Remove the time component, and the cookies vanish - they lack duration. Same with the gigaFLOP. Contrary to your original nit-pick, my nit-pick shows that a gigaflop must have a time component:-)
It's also by manipulating the time component (allowing for the passage back in time of information on state) that we can solve the halting problem, at least in the confines of a thought experiment - and this is a lot more interesting than any nit-picking if only because of the side-effects. (yes, the flow of state info back in time isn't allowed, but this is a thought experiment - it's allowed by the same rules that give us an infinitely long tape. You'd be surprised how people who allow the tape without blinking an eye don't want to allow information to go back in time - guess they never heard that information wants to have many degrees of freedom:-)
Can you offer a way to prevent cheating? Any? Even in theory?
I can offer several 100% guaranteed foolproof way of preventing cheating in elections.
The Secret Ballot.
You receive your vote, sealed in an envelope.
You stick the envelope in the ballot box.
Don't open that envelope, citizen! - it's a SECRET ballot:-)
Since we know what the contents of the ballot were when we printed them, we don't even need to count them - just announce that I won the election, (though we could if we want to detect attempts at tampering).
Suspend all elections (and appoint me supreme ruler while you're at it:-)
One vote per person.
Once you've made your vote (for me), we execute you, to ensure full compliance with the "one vote per person" rule.
Wow. Two uber-confident and completely incorrect responses in a row now, both citing the exact same text that should have been made it completely clear that without an 'S' in GigaFLOP there is no seconds.
Everything in context, grasshopper - the context being the article, which uses the term "supercomputer" multiple times. Supercomputer performance is always measured in FLOPs per second. Otherwise, an old 8086 would qualify if you just left it on for enough centuries - hence the joke. Please turn in your geek card until you can get a humour transplant.
Canadians ARE different in a lot of ways. For one thing, we tend to trust our governments more, and since we usually have several other viable political parties to choose from, so we don't get the extreme polarization you see in American politics.
We've also done a lot of campaign finance reform over the decades, limiting who and how much can be donated.
As for the actual question - I pay my bills onine, but I insist that they mail me my copy of the bill rather than just an email. A lot of us are like that - we combine the old and the new to suit our tastes. We have a permanent voters' list maintained by the government, and we require an ID to vote to help prevent fraud. Would I use it? Maybe. I suspect that a lot would, some wouldn't and some will be fence-sitters, waiting to see how it works the first few times before using it.
30 years computer scientist here. I know more ways to cheat an electronic election than you do most likely. I don't know any way to secure an electronic election.
Don't bet on it. Combine a quarter-century computer experience AND worked at the polls, I probably know more ways to cheat elections, having caught cheats. You have to know how to cheat in order to recognize it...
Redefine a Gigaflop. Say 1 billion floating point instructions per century.
Gigaflop doesn't even have a time dimension.
Are you on drugs? Sure it does: FLoating point Operations Per Second.
Hint - they're looking for a machine that can do 50 gigaFLOPs. Such performance is always measured per unit of time. Same as 1 horsepower is 550 foot-pounds per second.
If you google for it yourself, you can keep your beginners-level trainee deck swab geek card:-)
First, we have NOT established whether Brooke is in fact a tabla raza or not. Until then, everything else you posit doesn't make sense.
For example, she is NOT "a pet" UNLESS there is "nobody home." I have continually expounded on the difference that the two options make, and you have continually ignored it.
Why?
So you can criticize me for something you continually impute to me that I clearly don't believe in?
If there's pretty much nobody home, she's just meat, and might as well be culled, harvested, or whatever. If, on the other hand, there's a person in there, then she's not a pet and the family shouldn't be treating her as one. Don't blame me - blame the family. They're the one who are claiming she's a functioning person and yet treating her like a toy or a pet, and are making the outlandish, unbelievable, and clearly false claims, such as "she's not aging" and "maybe she holds the clue to immortality or a long life."
Do not criticize me for the family's contradictory behaviour. I'm just pointing it out.
Also, the culling of humans IS legal, and has been going on for decades. Most cases never make it to the media - they're decided behind closed doors, discussed in hushed tones, and involve a quick dose of potassium chloride. I've had to advise a couple in one such situation. It's legal and common in lots of places. "The rest of humanity" doesn't condemn me for it - just those who haven't had such a ponderous request imposed on them. You'd be surprised at how much self-examination you do to ensure that you're giving the best advice possible under the circumstances.
Redefine a Gigaflop. Say 1 billion floating point instructions per century.
Hey - It worked for hard disk manufacturers for gigabytes.
It works all the time for food companies when they say something now has "only" X number of calories per portion, by making the portions something like "2 potato chips."
It works for ISPs for "unlimited Internet access".
It works for Microsoft for "most secure [insert whatever] ever."
It worked for George "Mission Accomplished" Bush. Kinda...
It'll work for Barack "No tax increase for anyone making under $250,000" Obama. (okay, I'll give you that it's really doubtful for that one)
If one of my dogs were to become brain-dead tomorrow, it wouldn't be suffering - nobody home - and I'd put it down - simply BECAUSE there would be nobody home.
Similarly, if a human is brain-dead, there's nothing to be done about it - you don't keep the empty husk of Granny alive, prop her up at the dinner table, sit her in front of the TV, etc., just because you can't deal with the loss... you acknowledge the loss that has happened, pull the plug, donate the organs, grieve, and move on.
It's because they are already brain-dead that they are not deserving of empathy any more than a rock is. Can you "feel a rock's pain?" Can you "empathize with a rocks' anxiety over whether to roll down the hill or stay put?" No - these phrases are meaningless, same as talking about a brain-dead person's "sense of pain." There's nobody "there" to "sense" the signal. It's like the person who would anthropomorphize the rock - just nonsense.
If there's a "person" or a "being" there, then it's a whole different kettle of fish. You CAN empathize with their suffering, their sense of pain, their indecisions and anxieties, their happiness, their triumphs and defeats. But empathy takes 2 entities - entities that are aware. While we can empathize with another person, or a dog or cat, when we think we're empathizing with a paramecium, we're just projecting what we would feel in similar circumstances... there's no evidence whatsoever that paramecium have feelings to empathize with, or that they can reciprocate.
Look at the map yourself. There are NO provinces lying wholly north of Edmonton (approx 55 degrees)
Look at the map yourself. Edmonton isn't a province, so the "NO provinces lying wholly north of Edmonton is a non-sequiteur.
Teh posters' definition of a major city is cities over 1 million. This misses out such major cities as Jerusalem, Las Vegas, etc. Here's a more complete list.
BTW, Nunavut, Northwest Territories, and Yukon all lie entirely above Edmonton, and almost completely above the 60th parallel. The main difference between a province and a territory is historical - provinces are states that receive their power and authority directly from the Constitution Act, 1867, whereas territories derive their mandates and powers from the federal government. Seeing what happened the last time we tried to amend the constitution, this artificial distinction is likely to remain for some time.
"nowadays, pretty much if is not web related, or if its an opinion on a non-web related aspect of development, it IS of lesser import"
That is total bullshit. The Internet is a lot more than just "the web", http over port 80, and "web pages." Your post refers to the web and communications as if they were one and the same - they're not.
Data and voice telecommunications packet networks are just one example. If web pages were to disappear for a day, we'd gripe and moan, but cut off our phones and other data?
The point is that RMS is saying not to integrate Tomboy into the base of a distro, and he gives good reasons for it. Mono is a known attempt at a trojan horse attack on linux. de Icaza is it's shill.C# was microsofts' response to being forced to NOT fork java into a Microsoft-only-compatible java by Sun in a lawsuit. dot.net was a failed attempt to get away from the browser as a delivery platform.
There's a lot of history here, and anyone who believes "We're from Microsoft and we're here to help you" is naive.
I live in one of the 100 largest cities in the world, and yet I would consider Anchorage, with a 10th the population, to still be a major city. I'm sure the residents of Anchorage feel the same way. My point was that limiting major cities to those over 1,000,000 is an extremely limiting, and not-used practice. As I pointed out, 100 years ago there were scarcely a dozen cities that size - but certainly there were more than a dozen major cities world-wide. The same can be said for the stats from 50 years ago and from today.
According to the 1,000,000 club criteria, San Jose doesn't qualify as a major city; neither does Dublin, nor Mombasa (Kenya), Jodpur (India), La Paz (Bloivia), Liverpool (UK), Marseille (France), Indianapolis (US), Zagreb (Croatia), Lodz and Krakow (Poland), Columbus, Ohio (US), Jerusalem (Israel), Nankang (China), Pretoria (S. Africa), Memphis, Tennessee (US), Kathmandu (Nepal), Palermo (Italy), Acapulco and Veracruz (Mexico), Fort Worth, Texas (US), Vladivostok (Russia), El Paso, Texas (US), Dortmund and Stuttgart (Germany), Milwaukee (US), Glasgow (UK), Düsseldorf (Germany), Helsinki (Finland), Louisville, Kentucky (US), Las Vegas (US), Cancun (Mexico), Oslo (Norway), Bremen (Germany), Portland, Oregon (US), Islamabad (Pakistan), Abu Dhabi (UAE), Rotterdam (Netherlands)
All these cities have more than half a million people. How can Jerusalem, Marseille, Liverpool, or Las Vegas NOT be considered a major city? Jerusalem? Not a "major city?" Acapulco? Cancun? Kentucky? Abu Dhabi? Fort Worth? Not major cities? Wow...
The original posters' criterion for "major city" is a major fail.
Beyond that, even if Brooke was completely brain dead and devoid of all humanity, she still looks and acts like a human infant
If my dogs were completely brain dead and devoid of all "dogginess", yes, I'd put them down. I had to put my St. Bernard down last year because of a combination of a life-threatening infection that had a very low and only very-short-term probability of any sort of success coupled with a degenerative disease of the muscles - sometimes helping something you love means helping it reach the end. A few years before, my old Newfie was dying of advanced cancer.. same thing. They were both hard to do, because they were "still there", aware of what was going on even through their suffering. I would have preferred that they were brain-dead. THAT would have been easy in comparison, because the part that counts, that means anything and everything, would already have been gone.
If, on the other hand, the subject is brain-dead, as your example posits, I fail to see what's the big deal. Any qualms sound more like they're based on ignorance and superstition to me.
I reserve my empathy for the living. After all, it's not like the brain-dead can ever respond, ever appreciate it, ever have any use for it, ever know about it, any more than a brick or a rock or a glass or water can.
Slashdot Mirror
Might as well get MediaSentry and the RIAA in on the act ...
Of course they did! How else do you think they were able to write the stories about how Ford started mass-producing flying horseless carriages or the first Montgolfier balloon to actually circumnavigate the moon. My great-great-grandparents watched it as it happened on their coal-powered TeleStereopticon. If you don't believe it, you can always search for the story on the aethernet with your Difference Engine. Just goolgol for it.
Do you really want to admit that? Wouldn't it be better to claim you were searching for, I don't know, porn or something?
Actually, most people were probably surprised that he lasted as long as he did. With body parts falling off or changing colour, he was obviously WAY past his "best before" date.
That he died of a heart attack is just so ... mundane ... you'd expect it to be something like an angry parent or slipping off a balcony or a hyperbaric chamber malfunction or something involving Bubbles, a rope, and a closet.
The "attack" was just millions saying "I have no life, you insensitive clod!"
Google should have returned a custom error page for Michael Jackson searches - either Error 301: Moved Permanently, or Error 410: Gone would have been fine, accompanied by a "Resource Expired: Beat It!" message.
Good catch - thank you. Even though it doesn't negate the argument (Oz still spends more on education than military), it does "tighten the gap". I guess I made a transcription error - it certainly wasn't intentional.
And as I point out, all such objects DO have a time component.
Also, unlike "metres", since a gigaFLOP requires that something actually be executed (an action performed, done, or carried out from start to finish), you can't have a FLOP w/o time. A FLOP isn't a discrete object or thing, it's an action. You can't "have" a gigaFLOP, you can only "do" a gigFLOP. Sort of like you can't "have" a push-up, you can only "do" it. You can't wrap a gigaFLOP up in nice paper and send it with a gift card ...
But it's all nit-picking anyway ... I thought the joke wasn't *that* bad (I've done better, I've done worse, try the fish :-)
This still doesn't change the fact that all those measurements of performance (and even your current reply) have time as a component. Measuring computer performance requires, even in your latest example a (operation)/s.
The context of the article (supercomputer with specific performance) and my joke (changing the denominator to achieve the desired result) also make it clear that we're measuring performance with a time component.
Also, even a single FLOP has a time component. Nothing happens instantaneously. All actions require time in which to execute. Here are several different ways to look at it, all with the same result.
Let's invoke a relative of the paradox of Zeno. Without some time component, you can't have any way of differentiating one instructions' execution from another - so you can't measure or even posit the existence of more than one FLOP without a time component somewhere, even if only as a hidden or assumed variable. cpu executes instruction. then at some future time, it executes another instruction. Now, remove the "at some future time" - how is any observer to know that they're not observing the same instruction? You can't "prove" the existence of more than that one FLOP without invoking time and duration.
If they're executing on less than (1 billion cpus) /(number of simultaneous floating point instructions each cpu can execute), you can't "have" a billion FLOPS. Any snapshot will show a certain number of FLOPS being executed - the others are gone or not yet there. So a gigaflop, unless it's being simultaneously executed on such a large machine, definitely has a time dimension that extends beyond the duration of the execution of one FLOP.
Lets further simplify - again, since the execution of the instruction is not instantaneous, each FLOP definitely has a time component, just like every other event in this universe. It has a start and an end. Just like I have 5 cookies. Duration (time) is implicit in the act of my "having" 5 cookies. Remove the time component, and the cookies vanish - they lack duration. Same with the gigaFLOP. Contrary to your original nit-pick, my nit-pick shows that a gigaflop must have a time component :-)
It's also by manipulating the time component (allowing for the passage back in time of information on state) that we can solve the halting problem, at least in the confines of a thought experiment - and this is a lot more interesting than any nit-picking if only because of the side-effects. (yes, the flow of state info back in time isn't allowed, but this is a thought experiment - it's allowed by the same rules that give us an infinitely long tape. You'd be surprised how people who allow the tape without blinking an eye don't want to allow information to go back in time - guess they never heard that information wants to have many degrees of freedom :-)
I can offer several 100% guaranteed foolproof way of preventing cheating in elections.
You receive your vote, sealed in an envelope.
You stick the envelope in the ballot box.
Don't open that envelope, citizen! - it's a SECRET ballot
Since we know what the contents of the ballot were when we printed them, we don't even need to count them - just announce that I won the election, (though we could if we want to detect attempts at tampering).
(and appoint me supreme ruler while you're at it
Once you've made your vote (for me), we execute you, to ensure full compliance with the "one vote per person" rule.
Now where's my government grant?
Canadians ARE different in a lot of ways. For one thing, we tend to trust our governments more, and since we usually have several other viable political parties to choose from, so we don't get the extreme polarization you see in American politics.
We've also done a lot of campaign finance reform over the decades, limiting who and how much can be donated.
As for the actual question - I pay my bills onine, but I insist that they mail me my copy of the bill rather than just an email. A lot of us are like that - we combine the old and the new to suit our tastes. We have a permanent voters' list maintained by the government, and we require an ID to vote to help prevent fraud. Would I use it? Maybe. I suspect that a lot would, some wouldn't and some will be fence-sitters, waiting to see how it works the first few times before using it.
Don't sweat it - I'm still pissed off about kib, mib, etc. kib - what's that - a unit of dog kibble? "My dog eats 3 kibs a day."
Thanks, you too :-) It's been interesting.
Don't bet on it. Combine a quarter-century computer experience AND worked at the polls, I probably know more ways to cheat elections, having caught cheats. You have to know how to cheat in order to recognize it ...
Considering that the story is about Canadian elections, who gives a fuck what the American public thinks?
Right, you didn't read the headline, never mind the summary, and god forbid reading the article.
Are you on drugs? Sure it does: FLoating point Operations Per Second.
Hint - they're looking for a machine that can do 50 gigaFLOPs. Such performance is always measured per unit of time. Same as 1 horsepower is 550 foot-pounds per second.
If you google for it yourself, you can keep your beginners-level trainee deck swab geek card :-)
First, we have NOT established whether Brooke is in fact a tabla raza or not. Until then, everything else you posit doesn't make sense.
For example, she is NOT "a pet" UNLESS there is "nobody home." I have continually expounded on the difference that the two options make, and you have continually ignored it.
Why?
So you can criticize me for something you continually impute to me that I clearly don't believe in?
If there's pretty much nobody home, she's just meat, and might as well be culled, harvested, or whatever. If, on the other hand, there's a person in there, then she's not a pet and the family shouldn't be treating her as one. Don't blame me - blame the family. They're the one who are claiming she's a functioning person and yet treating her like a toy or a pet, and are making the outlandish, unbelievable, and clearly false claims, such as "she's not aging" and "maybe she holds the clue to immortality or a long life."
Do not criticize me for the family's contradictory behaviour. I'm just pointing it out.
Also, the culling of humans IS legal, and has been going on for decades. Most cases never make it to the media - they're decided behind closed doors, discussed in hushed tones, and involve a quick dose of potassium chloride. I've had to advise a couple in one such situation. It's legal and common in lots of places. "The rest of humanity" doesn't condemn me for it - just those who haven't had such a ponderous request imposed on them. You'd be surprised at how much self-examination you do to ensure that you're giving the best advice possible under the circumstances.
That would be a marked improvement ... :-)
Redefine a Gigaflop. Say 1 billion floating point instructions per century.
Hey - It worked for hard disk manufacturers for gigabytes.
It works all the time for food companies when they say something now has "only" X number of calories per portion, by making the portions something like "2 potato chips."
It works for ISPs for "unlimited Internet access".
It works for Microsoft for "most secure [insert whatever] ever."
It worked for George "Mission Accomplished" Bush. Kinda ...
It'll work for Barack "No tax increase for anyone making under $250,000" Obama. (okay, I'll give you that it's really doubtful for that one)
Now where's my grant money?
If one of my dogs were to become brain-dead tomorrow, it wouldn't be suffering - nobody home - and I'd put it down - simply BECAUSE there would be nobody home.
Similarly, if a human is brain-dead, there's nothing to be done about it - you don't keep the empty husk of Granny alive, prop her up at the dinner table, sit her in front of the TV, etc., just because you can't deal with the loss ... you acknowledge the loss that has happened, pull the plug, donate the organs, grieve, and move on.
It's because they are already brain-dead that they are not deserving of empathy any more than a rock is. Can you "feel a rock's pain?" Can you "empathize with a rocks' anxiety over whether to roll down the hill or stay put?" No - these phrases are meaningless, same as talking about a brain-dead person's "sense of pain." There's nobody "there" to "sense" the signal. It's like the person who would anthropomorphize the rock - just nonsense.
If there's a "person" or a "being" there, then it's a whole different kettle of fish. You CAN empathize with their suffering, their sense of pain, their indecisions and anxieties, their happiness, their triumphs and defeats. But empathy takes 2 entities - entities that are aware. While we can empathize with another person, or a dog or cat, when we think we're empathizing with a paramecium, we're just projecting what we would feel in similar circumstances ... there's no evidence whatsoever that paramecium have feelings to empathize with, or that they can reciprocate.
Hope this clears it up for you.
Look at the map yourself. Edmonton isn't a province, so the "NO provinces lying wholly north of Edmonton is a non-sequiteur.
Teh posters' definition of a major city is cities over 1 million. This misses out such major cities as Jerusalem, Las Vegas, etc. Here's a more complete list.
BTW, Nunavut, Northwest Territories, and Yukon all lie entirely above Edmonton, and almost completely above the 60th parallel. The main difference between a province and a territory is historical - provinces are states that receive their power and authority directly from the Constitution Act, 1867, whereas territories derive their mandates and powers from the federal government. Seeing what happened the last time we tried to amend the constitution, this artificial distinction is likely to remain for some time.
"nowadays, pretty much if is not web related, or if its an opinion on a non-web related aspect of development, it IS of lesser import"
That is total bullshit. The Internet is a lot more than just "the web", http over port 80, and "web pages." Your post refers to the web and communications as if they were one and the same - they're not.
Data and voice telecommunications packet networks are just one example. If web pages were to disappear for a day, we'd gripe and moan, but cut off our phones and other data?
The point is that RMS is saying not to integrate Tomboy into the base of a distro, and he gives good reasons for it. Mono is a known attempt at a trojan horse attack on linux. de Icaza is it's shill.C# was microsofts' response to being forced to NOT fork java into a Microsoft-only-compatible java by Sun in a lawsuit. dot.net was a failed attempt to get away from the browser as a delivery platform.
There's a lot of history here, and anyone who believes "We're from Microsoft and we're here to help you" is naive.
I live in one of the 100 largest cities in the world, and yet I would consider Anchorage, with a 10th the population, to still be a major city. I'm sure the residents of Anchorage feel the same way. My point was that limiting major cities to those over 1,000,000 is an extremely limiting, and not-used practice. As I pointed out, 100 years ago there were scarcely a dozen cities that size - but certainly there were more than a dozen major cities world-wide. The same can be said for the stats from 50 years ago and from today.
According to the 1,000,000 club criteria, San Jose doesn't qualify as a major city; neither does Dublin, nor Mombasa (Kenya), Jodpur (India), La Paz (Bloivia), Liverpool (UK), Marseille (France), Indianapolis (US), Zagreb (Croatia), Lodz and Krakow (Poland), Columbus, Ohio (US), Jerusalem (Israel), Nankang (China), Pretoria (S. Africa), Memphis, Tennessee (US), Kathmandu (Nepal), Palermo (Italy), Acapulco and Veracruz (Mexico), Fort Worth, Texas (US), Vladivostok (Russia), El Paso, Texas (US), Dortmund and Stuttgart (Germany), Milwaukee (US), Glasgow (UK), Düsseldorf (Germany), Helsinki (Finland), Louisville, Kentucky (US), Las Vegas (US), Cancun (Mexico), Oslo (Norway), Bremen (Germany), Portland, Oregon (US), Islamabad (Pakistan), Abu Dhabi (UAE), Rotterdam (Netherlands)
All these cities have more than half a million people. How can Jerusalem, Marseille, Liverpool, or Las Vegas NOT be considered a major city? Jerusalem? Not a "major city?" Acapulco? Cancun? Kentucky? Abu Dhabi? Fort Worth? Not major cities? Wow ...
The original posters' criterion for "major city" is a major fail.
If my dogs were completely brain dead and devoid of all "dogginess", yes, I'd put them down. I had to put my St. Bernard down last year because of a combination of a life-threatening infection that had a very low and only very-short-term probability of any sort of success coupled with a degenerative disease of the muscles - sometimes helping something you love means helping it reach the end. A few years before, my old Newfie was dying of advanced cancer .. same thing. They were both hard to do, because they were "still there", aware of what was going on even through their suffering. I would have preferred that they were brain-dead. THAT would have been easy in comparison, because the part that counts, that means anything and everything, would already have been gone.
If, on the other hand, the subject is brain-dead, as your example posits, I fail to see what's the big deal. Any qualms sound more like they're based on ignorance and superstition to me.
I reserve my empathy for the living. After all, it's not like the brain-dead can ever respond, ever appreciate it, ever have any use for it, ever know about it, any more than a brick or a rock or a glass or water can.
They shouldn't be - the symptoms and effects of both forms of MS are interchangeable.