If I have a steady source of income, it is no more difficult to buy something for $800 than for $20. It's simply a matter of time. It may take a year instead of a week to save up the money, but that doesn't actually make it harder. It only makes it harder to get a gun on short notice, and then only if the price is increased above your level of petty cash.
If you only sell guns to people who'd never misuse them, of course crime will drop (or at the very least, not go up). Well, criminals will get them on the black market no matter how hard it is to get them legally. Millions of people come into the US illegally every year. Millions if not billions of dollars worth of drugs come into the US every year. It's not really any harder to bring an AK-47 in than a bunch of cocaine or heroine. The point is that the better the general citizen is armed, the greater the risk is for the would-be robber/rapist/murderer. If nobody has a gun, all you need is a knife. If nobody has a knife, all you need is a fist. If everybody has a gun, you never know which victim is going to give you his wallet, then shoot you in the back as you run away.
I, for one, would give Meta Discussion a -6 modifier, but I don't mind general Offtopic posts. Sometimes they're worth reading, and sometimes they're not, but the posts about the editors and the article submissions and moderation practices are almost always worthless.
Is there a way to set this system-wide so that "C:\Documents and Settings" becomes "D:\Documents and Settings" (and all the environment variables get set properly so that well-designed software can find it), or to move "C:\Program Files" to "P:\" (and the same thing about making %Program Files% point to the right place)?
Actually my code was correct. I understand that C-style casts are legal in C++, but I was attempting humor by pointing out that the recommended casts are even uglier. Clearly that was a miserable failure.
How about later when you decide you really did want x to be a float? You remove the cast? I mean, if you change the type of x, part of that process is changing the code that uses x to treat x as the new type. I was simply suggesting that the cast may aid the maintenance process by providing extra information. As with most things, changing the context can totally screw that communication up.
PS. As a correction to the/. posting typo I made earlier: x = static_cast<unsigned int>(y * 3); Must remember to preview and use entities for angle brackets in Plain Old Text.
x = (unsigned int)(y * 3); Hey now, in C++ the correct version is x = static_cast(y * 3);
Seriously though, the cast is a reminder to a maintenance programmer that "hey, x is an unsigned int!". It's also a step in the self-documenting code process. If I turn on all the "did the original programmer make any stupid mistakes" warnings (sorry, but "newbie" warnings as used above wasn't the best term), the version with the cast will, reasonably, not generate a warning. The version without a cast says generates a warning, and the new maintenance programmer has to inspect it to make sure x really was supposed to be an unsigned int in this case.
I have to disagree that the mirror image is a necessary condition for humans. People who are born sightless still develop into self-aware adults. The recoginition of a mirror image as oneself is a key point at which the child demonstrates awareness and the ability to recognize said independent "self". Frankly, it's just a point where kids figure out that shiny objects reflect light and infer that the image in the mirror must be them. Self-awareness is a prerequisite.
Actually, you have that backwards. The A in AJAX stands for Asynchronous. While AJAX is doing its thing, the rest of the page continues to load. It's when the ad is included via an object or img element that you end up having to wait for morons' ads to load.
1. Doctors want too much money 2. Some people don't want to go to college, and other's aren't smart enough to make it through college; universal college education is unnecessary.. on the other hand, you about have to get an associate's degree to learn what people used to learn in high school so YMMV 3. This isn't so much about psychopaths as people being too lazy to learn things. Many people like the cancer causing chemicals and high-fructose corn syrup because it's cheap and it tastes good, and they don't know any better. 4. Because smokers just want their cigarettes, and the rest of us just want the smokers to keep it away from us. 5. Because a higher minimum wage merely drives inflation. If McDonalds has to pay its workers more, they'll raise prices, so skilled workers who eat there for lunch will want more money, so other companies will raise their prices, and there's inflation for you.
Why arent we all our own boss? We tried this before. It was called subsistance farming and barter. Face facts: some of "us" aren't skilled at business, but others are only skilled at management (yes, some really actually are.. they just don't get a lot of the spotlight because the PHBs of the world are far too many). Also, some jobs require multiple-person teams (and you can't have a team of bosses, it doesn't work).
I've found that it's trivial to mail a CD containing a public key with a handwritten note signed with my physical signature. In the few cases where I wouldn't consider this adequate, I've found hand delivering said CD to be sufficient.
I think you've missed the point. The point is that a non-admin user can't install any software in their own space. Virtually all software is installed globally. The point is that some software requires administrative access to run because it makes excessive use of restricted areas of the registry. The point is that in a properly-designed system, normal users can only break their stuff, no matter what they do, but they're free to work in their own space however they like.
That's funny because there have been 3 each of Episodes 4-6 so far, and for some reason, I wouldn't be too surprised if there's at least one more of all six before it's all over with.
Actually, I argue that the creator didn't come into existance at all but rather simply exists because time is only meaningful inside the universe. To come into existance requires that there was a point in time where the entity did not exist and a later time where the entity does exist. I argue that outside of the universe, it is possible that the entity simply exists because there are no different points of time.
Furthermore, I noted in the post to which you reply that some suggest that the creator and the universe are in exactly the same thing, that essentially the universe is the inside of the creator and thus that the organization that we see as the universe exists within an entity that--basically--created itself.
My primary argument, however, is that we can't know with any relatively-decent certainty anything about what exists beyond the universe (or even whether anything exists beyond the universe) and that therefore all attempts to discuss the root cause of the universe (or even to discuss whether or not such a cause exists) are conjecture at best based on our current ability to observe the universe. Therefore, I conclude that the possibility of a creator can't be dismissed as pseudoscience because the declaration that a creator does not exist is just as groundless. The correct statement is that we don't know whether or not a creator exists. Religious people (theists) believe that a creator exists. Athiests (use whatever word you want, I distinguish "athiest" from "agnostic") believe that a creator does not exist. Both positions are pure belief and without any scientific ground. Science shows that we can't reasonably demonstrate whether or not a creator exists, and therefore any statement affirming the existance or non-existance of said creator is completely unscientific.
It doesn't matter whether or not the Creator is part of the Universe or not. Actually, yes it does matter. The reason for this is that outside the Universe, space and time have no meaning (by definition of Universe as the container holding all space-time.. quibble as necessary). If space and time have no meaning, essentially everything we know (including causality) has no meaning because all of our observations are based on existance inside space-time. As such, outside the Universe, it is possible for an entity to simply exist without cause; however, inside the universe all events have a cause (traced back to the Big Bang where the cause is "we don't know because we don't know what happened before this point because space and time cease to make sense here").
Also, note that some Creationists believe that God is the entire Universe and created it within Himself. Others believe that God contains the Universe and created it within Himself but also exists beyond the Universe. Others believe that God exists in some other "place" outside of the Universe and created the Unvierse outside of Himself. Only the last of these would even potentially require a MetaCreator as it implies some dimension and direction to this extra-Universal region (since it would contain at least two subregions, Creator and Universe).
Is the outside of the universe a magical place where complexity springs into existence without cause? As time has no meaning outside of the universe, the concept of "springing into existance" has no meaning because the concept of "before" has no meaning. Thus, it's possible that outside of the universe, something exists without cause. Inside the universe, we can observe that this is not the case, but as we can't observe outside the universe, we have to accept the possibility that it could be the case there but not here.
Hardly sounds like a scientific theory to me. No one knows because all of science is based on observations inside the universe. Frankly, the existance of "outside the universe" is mere speculation and hardly sounds like a scientific theory to me. On the other hand, the non-existance of "outside the universe" is equally unscientific speculation. The only scientifically valid statement about such a region is that we don't know anything about it. (Again, note that I'm referring to the universe, not a universe, the difference being that the universe contains all space-time whereas a universe contains all space-time at one point along a fifth or higher dimension of some sort, which may or may not exist.) The entire discussion can't be scientific because it assumes the existance of an "outside the universe", which we have no evidence for or against. Then again, the entire discussion of "before the Big Bang" is unscientific because we have no evidence for or against the existance of such a time (that is to say, the dimension of time may be finite).
I personally subscribe to the idea that evolution in and of itself is plausible, however the spontaneous formation of life from the "primordial soup" that started the process seems like something cooked up by an infinite improbability drive. As such, I see no reason to consider "intelligent design"--that is to say, the idea that God created the universe and designed it in a way that produced humans through whatever process, including evolution--less likely than randomness as a first cause. Frankly, however it worked, spontaneous genesis of life violates accepted laws of biology (ie, all life comes from life and all cells come from cells), so why can't we all just agree that something very very unlikely happened, we don't know why it happened, but damnit we're glad it did?
That would only work until people start doing what they basically do now and confirming that the comments are correct without actually taking the time to verify that fact. (Subtly incorrect is often much worse than obviously incorrect.) Granted, the system would remind the programmer to check, but a rushed glance at the comment will likely result in "yeah, it's fine" when it's not.
a little bit more pop action than the dark trailer that gave me hope
Well, based on the fact that virtually all of the Jedi are wiped out by the time of A New Hope, you ought to expect a lot of lightsaber action in the movie. Really, aside from the audio of the annoying announcer whose voice was way too happy for what was going on in the video, it's still a set of pretty dark TV spots. [I think at this point still] Chancellor Palpatine flies out of his chair with a lightsaber at the number-two Jedi for crying out loud.
That, and we see Star Destroyers. That gives me hope. My only concern is that I don't know if the movie starts with a mood-setting Star Destroyer passing over the camera. Really, judging by the past, we have a pattern. Star Wars movies opening with Star Destroyers: good; Star Wars movies opening without Star Destroyers: bad.
No, but a long time ago, in what seems like it must've been a galaxy far far away, there was a good story put on film with a bunch of cutting-edge special effects. Now, it seems, George has decided that the plot has to fit within 3 levels of outline and character development is anathema. Some of the best scenes from Episode2 were the ones that got cut, and I'd wager (based on the differences between the novel and the film) that the same goes for Episode 1. I can't say the same for the original trilogy, (except perhaps the Kenobi-on-Dagobah-giving-backstory scene from Return of the Jedi).
A cookie can be (and often is) used to store the search results even though only part of the result is displayed. This minimizes doing database/filesystem queries for the same data. I personally don't condone the practice, but I can see why larger sites may want to avoid having every user hit the database with a potentially complex query for every page of their search.
And I maintain that having to change your password monthly is a large part of the reason that the dangerous 90% of passwords get used. Furthermore, unless you have potential remote logins (which most "normal" users shouldn't have, and those that do should have a separate login method with a password that I can see changing more frequently), you have to sit at the terminal and type in every password attempt. Without a severe security breach (ie, attacker has encrypted passwords) there's no way to verify the password guess without an attempted login. Therefore, if you can trust your users not to give away their passwords, a good password will remain secure for a long time. When you have to change passwords monthly, you find people with note cards in their desk drawer (or worse under the mousepad!) with a series of passwords with all but the last one crossed out. That, in and of itself, makes it more dangerous to have short-lived passwords.
Slashdot Mirror
If I have a steady source of income, it is no more difficult to buy something for $800 than for $20. It's simply a matter of time. It may take a year instead of a week to save up the money, but that doesn't actually make it harder. It only makes it harder to get a gun on short notice, and then only if the price is increased above your level of petty cash.
If you only sell guns to people who'd never misuse them, of course crime will drop (or at the very least, not go up).
Well, criminals will get them on the black market no matter how hard it is to get them legally. Millions of people come into the US illegally every year. Millions if not billions of dollars worth of drugs come into the US every year. It's not really any harder to bring an AK-47 in than a bunch of cocaine or heroine. The point is that the better the general citizen is armed, the greater the risk is for the would-be robber/rapist/murderer. If nobody has a gun, all you need is a knife. If nobody has a knife, all you need is a fist. If everybody has a gun, you never know which victim is going to give you his wallet, then shoot you in the back as you run away.
On the other hand, if 90% of people had and could use guns, how many would-be rapists would decide it's not worth the risk of getting shot?
I, for one, would give Meta Discussion a -6 modifier, but I don't mind general Offtopic posts. Sometimes they're worth reading, and sometimes they're not, but the posts about the editors and the article submissions and moderation practices are almost always worthless.
Is there a way to set this system-wide so that "C:\Documents and Settings" becomes "D:\Documents and Settings" (and all the environment variables get set properly so that well-designed software can find it), or to move "C:\Program Files" to "P:\" (and the same thing about making %Program Files% point to the right place)?
Actually my code was correct.
/. posting typo I made earlier: x = static_cast<unsigned int>(y * 3);
I understand that C-style casts are legal in C++, but I was attempting humor by pointing out that the recommended casts are even uglier. Clearly that was a miserable failure.
How about later when you decide you really did want x to be a float?
You remove the cast? I mean, if you change the type of x, part of that process is changing the code that uses x to treat x as the new type. I was simply suggesting that the cast may aid the maintenance process by providing extra information. As with most things, changing the context can totally screw that communication up.
PS. As a correction to the
Must remember to preview and use entities for angle brackets in Plain Old Text.
Maybe also English people invent new words when they don't exist. ;-)
Two words: William Shakespeare
x = (unsigned int)(y * 3);
Hey now, in C++ the correct version is x = static_cast(y * 3);
Seriously though, the cast is a reminder to a maintenance programmer that "hey, x is an unsigned int!". It's also a step in the self-documenting code process. If I turn on all the "did the original programmer make any stupid mistakes" warnings (sorry, but "newbie" warnings as used above wasn't the best term), the version with the cast will, reasonably, not generate a warning. The version without a cast says generates a warning, and the new maintenance programmer has to inspect it to make sure x really was supposed to be an unsigned int in this case.
I have to disagree that the mirror image is a necessary condition for humans. People who are born sightless still develop into self-aware adults. The recoginition of a mirror image as oneself is a key point at which the child demonstrates awareness and the ability to recognize said independent "self". Frankly, it's just a point where kids figure out that shiny objects reflect light and infer that the image in the mirror must be them. Self-awareness is a prerequisite.
Actually, you have that backwards. The A in AJAX stands for Asynchronous. While AJAX is doing its thing, the rest of the page continues to load. It's when the ad is included via an object or img element that you end up having to wait for morons' ads to load.
1. Doctors want too much money
2. Some people don't want to go to college, and other's aren't smart enough to make it through college; universal college education is unnecessary.. on the other hand, you about have to get an associate's degree to learn what people used to learn in high school so YMMV
3. This isn't so much about psychopaths as people being too lazy to learn things. Many people like the cancer causing chemicals and high-fructose corn syrup because it's cheap and it tastes good, and they don't know any better.
4. Because smokers just want their cigarettes, and the rest of us just want the smokers to keep it away from us.
5. Because a higher minimum wage merely drives inflation. If McDonalds has to pay its workers more, they'll raise prices, so skilled workers who eat there for lunch will want more money, so other companies will raise their prices, and there's inflation for you.
Why arent we all our own boss?
We tried this before. It was called subsistance farming and barter. Face facts: some of "us" aren't skilled at business, but others are only skilled at management (yes, some really actually are.. they just don't get a lot of the spotlight because the PHBs of the world are far too many). Also, some jobs require multiple-person teams (and you can't have a team of bosses, it doesn't work).
I've found that it's trivial to mail a CD containing a public key with a handwritten note signed with my physical signature. In the few cases where I wouldn't consider this adequate, I've found hand delivering said CD to be sufficient.
I think you've missed the point. The point is that a non-admin user can't install any software in their own space. Virtually all software is installed globally. The point is that some software requires administrative access to run because it makes excessive use of restricted areas of the registry. The point is that in a properly-designed system, normal users can only break their stuff, no matter what they do, but they're free to work in their own space however they like.
That's funny because there have been 3 each of Episodes 4-6 so far, and for some reason, I wouldn't be too surprised if there's at least one more of all six before it's all over with.
Actually, I argue that the creator didn't come into existance at all but rather simply exists because time is only meaningful inside the universe. To come into existance requires that there was a point in time where the entity did not exist and a later time where the entity does exist. I argue that outside of the universe, it is possible that the entity simply exists because there are no different points of time.
Furthermore, I noted in the post to which you reply that some suggest that the creator and the universe are in exactly the same thing, that essentially the universe is the inside of the creator and thus that the organization that we see as the universe exists within an entity that--basically--created itself.
My primary argument, however, is that we can't know with any relatively-decent certainty anything about what exists beyond the universe (or even whether anything exists beyond the universe) and that therefore all attempts to discuss the root cause of the universe (or even to discuss whether or not such a cause exists) are conjecture at best based on our current ability to observe the universe. Therefore, I conclude that the possibility of a creator can't be dismissed as pseudoscience because the declaration that a creator does not exist is just as groundless. The correct statement is that we don't know whether or not a creator exists. Religious people (theists) believe that a creator exists. Athiests (use whatever word you want, I distinguish "athiest" from "agnostic") believe that a creator does not exist. Both positions are pure belief and without any scientific ground. Science shows that we can't reasonably demonstrate whether or not a creator exists, and therefore any statement affirming the existance or non-existance of said creator is completely unscientific.
It doesn't matter whether or not the Creator is part of the Universe or not.
Actually, yes it does matter. The reason for this is that outside the Universe, space and time have no meaning (by definition of Universe as the container holding all space-time.. quibble as necessary). If space and time have no meaning, essentially everything we know (including causality) has no meaning because all of our observations are based on existance inside space-time. As such, outside the Universe, it is possible for an entity to simply exist without cause; however, inside the universe all events have a cause (traced back to the Big Bang where the cause is "we don't know because we don't know what happened before this point because space and time cease to make sense here").
Also, note that some Creationists believe that God is the entire Universe and created it within Himself. Others believe that God contains the Universe and created it within Himself but also exists beyond the Universe. Others believe that God exists in some other "place" outside of the Universe and created the Unvierse outside of Himself. Only the last of these would even potentially require a MetaCreator as it implies some dimension and direction to this extra-Universal region (since it would contain at least two subregions, Creator and Universe).
Is the outside of the universe a magical place where complexity springs into existence without cause?
As time has no meaning outside of the universe, the concept of "springing into existance" has no meaning because the concept of "before" has no meaning. Thus, it's possible that outside of the universe, something exists without cause. Inside the universe, we can observe that this is not the case, but as we can't observe outside the universe, we have to accept the possibility that it could be the case there but not here.
Hardly sounds like a scientific theory to me.
No one knows because all of science is based on observations inside the universe. Frankly, the existance of "outside the universe" is mere speculation and hardly sounds like a scientific theory to me. On the other hand, the non-existance of "outside the universe" is equally unscientific speculation. The only scientifically valid statement about such a region is that we don't know anything about it. (Again, note that I'm referring to the universe, not a universe, the difference being that the universe contains all space-time whereas a universe contains all space-time at one point along a fifth or higher dimension of some sort, which may or may not exist.) The entire discussion can't be scientific because it assumes the existance of an "outside the universe", which we have no evidence for or against. Then again, the entire discussion of "before the Big Bang" is unscientific because we have no evidence for or against the existance of such a time (that is to say, the dimension of time may be finite).
Re: Two
I personally subscribe to the idea that evolution in and of itself is plausible, however the spontaneous formation of life from the "primordial soup" that started the process seems like something cooked up by an infinite improbability drive. As such, I see no reason to consider "intelligent design"--that is to say, the idea that God created the universe and designed it in a way that produced humans through whatever process, including evolution--less likely than randomness as a first cause. Frankly, however it worked, spontaneous genesis of life violates accepted laws of biology (ie, all life comes from life and all cells come from cells), so why can't we all just agree that something very very unlikely happened, we don't know why it happened, but damnit we're glad it did?
That would only work until people start doing what they basically do now and confirming that the comments are correct without actually taking the time to verify that fact. (Subtly incorrect is often much worse than obviously incorrect.) Granted, the system would remind the programmer to check, but a rushed glance at the comment will likely result in "yeah, it's fine" when it's not.
Well, based on the fact that virtually all of the Jedi are wiped out by the time of A New Hope, you ought to expect a lot of lightsaber action in the movie. Really, aside from the audio of the annoying announcer whose voice was way too happy for what was going on in the video, it's still a set of pretty dark TV spots. [I think at this point still] Chancellor Palpatine flies out of his chair with a lightsaber at the number-two Jedi for crying out loud.
That, and we see Star Destroyers. That gives me hope. My only concern is that I don't know if the movie starts with a mood-setting Star Destroyer passing over the camera. Really, judging by the past, we have a pattern. Star Wars movies opening with Star Destroyers: good; Star Wars movies opening without Star Destroyers: bad.
No, but a long time ago, in what seems like it must've been a galaxy far far away, there was a good story put on film with a bunch of cutting-edge special effects. Now, it seems, George has decided that the plot has to fit within 3 levels of outline and character development is anathema. Some of the best scenes from Episode2 were the ones that got cut, and I'd wager (based on the differences between the novel and the film) that the same goes for Episode 1. I can't say the same for the original trilogy, (except perhaps the Kenobi-on-Dagobah-giving-backstory scene from Return of the Jedi).
And so a last hope before he replies, "Money fizban, money."
A cookie can be (and often is) used to store the search results even though only part of the result is displayed. This minimizes doing database/filesystem queries for the same data. I personally don't condone the practice, but I can see why larger sites may want to avoid having every user hit the database with a potentially complex query for every page of their search.
I second the motion. Somebody call Congress!
And I maintain that having to change your password monthly is a large part of the reason that the dangerous 90% of passwords get used. Furthermore, unless you have potential remote logins (which most "normal" users shouldn't have, and those that do should have a separate login method with a password that I can see changing more frequently), you have to sit at the terminal and type in every password attempt. Without a severe security breach (ie, attacker has encrypted passwords) there's no way to verify the password guess without an attempted login. Therefore, if you can trust your users not to give away their passwords, a good password will remain secure for a long time. When you have to change passwords monthly, you find people with note cards in their desk drawer (or worse under the mousepad!) with a series of passwords with all but the last one crossed out. That, in and of itself, makes it more dangerous to have short-lived passwords.