Hillary doesn't have a chance, IMO, but even if she does, America needs to stop treating the office of the President like a hereditary monarchy. She needs to follow Romney's lead and bow TFO.
Excellent points all, except for the premise of your last sentence:
The facts are, the stock market is at near record highs, unemployment is way down, oil and gasoline prices are down, more people have health insurance and there's been a huge slowdown in the increase of healthcare costs. We have tighter emissions standards for vehicles, and lower CO2 emissions for industry, more renewable energy. Net neutrality is inevitable. Immigration reform is on the horizon. Privacy reforms have begun (though they haven't gone nearly far enough). By nearly every measure, we are better off as a nation than we were when Obama took office.
Now, do I give him personal credit for all of those things? No, of course not. But the idea that things aren't better is the FOX News narrative, not a reflection of reality.
"Dot org" is not "dot gov." The latter is subject to FOIA (with PII removed unless it's pertinent), the former is not. Rightly or wrongly, people have a general expectation that their correspondence is not going to be published unless they're writing specifically to have it published.
John Stewart had become a lot like O'Reilly, someone who was paid to go on and pretend to be upset when he'd gotten to the point that he didn't really care that much anymore.
While I agree that he's certainly ready to move on, I don't think he is (or was) pretending to care about the issues; I think he's just getting a little tired of the format. Do anything for long enough and it gets tedious, and the job is the same every day: read headlines, find irony, make jokes. I would bet he wouldn't have traded any of his time on the show for any other gig in the world, but for all things, there is a season.
I was wondering how much longer Stewart would stick around after Colbert's departure though. It's not the same without Colbert as the follow-on, and I haven't bothered to watch the replacement.
To be fair, it's not really a primary news source, since they don't do much of their own research, excepting correspondents who tackle actual stories for a piece. What they do is consume other news media, and then comment on the biggest or funniest stories. That's not to say one can't glean enough from watching the show to be conversational on a variety of topics, but it's much closer to an editorial than journalism.
I sleep because it's a biological imperative, not because I don't want to be awake. If it was entirely up to my conscious decision-making and willpower, I would never sleep. Besides, oversleeping has its own consequences -- why add artificial ones?
"A legitimate use of recursion would probably be something a lot more complicated, and a lot harder to grasp"
Not really. Traversing a binary tree is the textbook example of the appropriate use of recursion. The concept is no more difficult to grasp than recursion itself, so not terribly complicated.
There are simpler, though less practical, appropriate examples as well, like factorials or fibonacci sequences. They're doable with for loops, but more elegant with recursion.
I'm going to note that your argument was presented using scant punctuation, capitalization, and as such is difficult to follow, which hurts your case. Presentation is important.
That said, I will move on to the meat of your argument.
you really should educate yourself, on basic pharmacology and history, before you comment on a topic
This is true for anyone trying to engage in any argument, including you.
ever since groog wanted to drown his sorrows in fermented fruit all day instead of carry his weight in his tribe, drugs have been a problem
No, the problem is the abuser's desire to avoid personal responsibility, and the conditions that led to such an attitude. The actions that result from such an attitude are the symptoms, not the cause. Without going into specifics, the symptoms can and do manifest just as easily in other antisocial behavior without abusing drugs.
the war on drugs has been going on forever, and will go on, forever
Not if we choose to address the cause instead of the symptoms. We don't have a "War on Alcohol," for example (anymore), but people can abuse alcohol just as easily as any other drug.
if you don't understand that drug use costs us all, or don't admit, you're a fucking moron on this topic
One person's use of a vehicle costs all of us, in the form of pollution -- even people who don't use vehicles. One person's use of property costs all of us who do not get to use that property -- even people who do not or cannot own property. Almost everything has costs that affect all of us, hidden or not. That doesn't mean the activity should be prohibited.
if you deny that not everyone uses them responsibly, if you deny that many become addicts, you don't understand a fucking thing you are talking about
That people are irresponsible with something does not necessitate its prohibition. People use cars irresponsibly -- cars are not illegal. People have children irresponsibly -- procreation is not illegal. People use alcohol irresponsibly -- possessing or drinking alcohol is not illegal. In a free society, a thing should only be prohibited if it is such an existential threat that it *must* be prohibited. WMDs fall into this category. Most drugs probably do not.
drugs will always be a problem. because people *always* misuse them
People will always misuse everything and anything, including regulations, because people are imperfect and make imperfect choices, even when they try to make benevolent choices. This is likely true for people who think that banning drugs is a net positive. At the very least, it warrants a dispassionate review of the evidence rather than name-calling and dramatics.
Prior to the 1980s, the number of women working in computer science was about on par with the male demographic.
False. CS degrees for women peaked in the mid-80s around 35%. It has, however, decreased since then, to around 20%, and even as low as 12% at some schools. Any explanation is speculative, at best. Asserting that women are culturally conditioned to not be interested in computers, though, is actually pretty insulting. It's saying that they're not smart or strong enough to make their own decisions, and that we need to decide what's best for them. If only women had had men to tell them to vote, they might have suffrage by now!
Yeah, all those elderly hooligans are such a menace, what with their muggings, their drive-by's, their suicide bombings, their oh wait, old people don't do those things. Old people with nothing to lose just die.
Not that that would be a reason to ignore the problem except guess what? Women in the industrialized world aren't having children either. And guess what else? Some people don't want to have kids. Perhaps as many as 25%? Maybe more? Have you done a poll lately? Hint: No. This topic is very under-studied, and your explanations are pure speculation.
To be fair, it also shows that the credibility of journalism has come a long way in 70 years. Back then, rumors, speculation, and opinions were given equal weight and presentation, even within a single article. We don't necessarily need pictures to believe a story today, and pictures aren't necessarily a reflection of reality anyway. It's all about the integrity of, and our trust in, the information sources we use.
Also, there's no interaction here, and this isn't the first instance of computer-generated content making it through human filters. There was an article a while ago about submissions to scientific journals... I think this is the story: http://www.nature.com/news/pub...
In both cases, the content was "complete gibberish," not coherent submissions. These stories don't demonstrate the progress of AI; they demonstrate the low expectations of "meaningful," that judges/editors have in specific circumstances.
That's all sort of moot -- people who use drones to actually carry out attacks won't give a shit about any law or regulation. (See, arguably, our own use of drones.)
This is a really hard problem. An attack from a small drone would be incredibly difficult to guard against. I'm actually shocked (legitimately) that there haven't been any attacks using hobbyist drones yet, since it's hard to think of a potential target that wouldn't be vulnerable. With the lower barrier to entry into the airspace (and eventually "space" space, presumably), we're going to have to rethink security of critical systems/people beyond just regulations.
I2P is (or seems) good for anonymously accessing eePsites, but it's not particularly useful for general browsing. And as of now there only seems to be one outproxy, which makes it even worse.
Slashdot Mirror
Not really; we just used to be younger and more impressionable.
Hillary doesn't have a chance, IMO, but even if she does, America needs to stop treating the office of the President like a hereditary monarchy. She needs to follow Romney's lead and bow TFO.
Excellent points all, except for the premise of your last sentence:
The facts are, the stock market is at near record highs, unemployment is way down, oil and gasoline prices are down, more people have health insurance and there's been a huge slowdown in the increase of healthcare costs. We have tighter emissions standards for vehicles, and lower CO2 emissions for industry, more renewable energy. Net neutrality is inevitable. Immigration reform is on the horizon. Privacy reforms have begun (though they haven't gone nearly far enough). By nearly every measure, we are better off as a nation than we were when Obama took office.
Now, do I give him personal credit for all of those things? No, of course not. But the idea that things aren't better is the FOX News narrative, not a reflection of reality.
"Dot org" is not "dot gov." The latter is subject to FOIA (with PII removed unless it's pertinent), the former is not. Rightly or wrongly, people have a general expectation that their correspondence is not going to be published unless they're writing specifically to have it published.
While I agree that he's certainly ready to move on, I don't think he is (or was) pretending to care about the issues; I think he's just getting a little tired of the format. Do anything for long enough and it gets tedious, and the job is the same every day: read headlines, find irony, make jokes. I would bet he wouldn't have traded any of his time on the show for any other gig in the world, but for all things, there is a season.
Only within the past few months, really:
Q1 2013: http://www.thefutoncritic.com/...
Q1 2015: http://variety.com/2015/tv/fea...
I was wondering how much longer Stewart would stick around after Colbert's departure though. It's not the same without Colbert as the follow-on, and I haven't bothered to watch the replacement.
To be fair, it's not really a primary news source, since they don't do much of their own research, excepting correspondents who tackle actual stories for a piece. What they do is consume other news media, and then comment on the biggest or funniest stories. That's not to say one can't glean enough from watching the show to be conversational on a variety of topics, but it's much closer to an editorial than journalism.
That would actually be a genuinely good choice. B dubs is always good for a laugh when he's on the show.
http://thedailyshow.cc.com/vid...
http://thedailyshow.cc.com/vid...
If people who could pull that off were a dime a dozen here, The Daily Show wouldn't exist. ;)
I sleep because it's a biological imperative, not because I don't want to be awake. If it was entirely up to my conscious decision-making and willpower, I would never sleep. Besides, oversleeping has its own consequences -- why add artificial ones?
"A legitimate use of recursion would probably be something a lot more complicated, and a lot harder to grasp"
Not really. Traversing a binary tree is the textbook example of the appropriate use of recursion. The concept is no more difficult to grasp than recursion itself, so not terribly complicated.
There are simpler, though less practical, appropriate examples as well, like factorials or fibonacci sequences. They're doable with for loops, but more elegant with recursion.
I'm going to note that your argument was presented using scant punctuation, capitalization, and as such is difficult to follow, which hurts your case. Presentation is important.
That said, I will move on to the meat of your argument.
you really should educate yourself, on basic pharmacology and history, before you comment on a topic
This is true for anyone trying to engage in any argument, including you.
ever since groog wanted to drown his sorrows in fermented fruit all day instead of carry his weight in his tribe, drugs have been a problem
No, the problem is the abuser's desire to avoid personal responsibility, and the conditions that led to such an attitude. The actions that result from such an attitude are the symptoms, not the cause. Without going into specifics, the symptoms can and do manifest just as easily in other antisocial behavior without abusing drugs.
the war on drugs has been going on forever, and will go on, forever
Not if we choose to address the cause instead of the symptoms. We don't have a "War on Alcohol," for example (anymore), but people can abuse alcohol just as easily as any other drug.
if you don't understand that drug use costs us all, or don't admit, you're a fucking moron on this topic
One person's use of a vehicle costs all of us, in the form of pollution -- even people who don't use vehicles. One person's use of property costs all of us who do not get to use that property -- even people who do not or cannot own property. Almost everything has costs that affect all of us, hidden or not. That doesn't mean the activity should be prohibited.
if you deny that not everyone uses them responsibly, if you deny that many become addicts, you don't understand a fucking thing you are talking about
That people are irresponsible with something does not necessitate its prohibition. People use cars irresponsibly -- cars are not illegal. People have children irresponsibly -- procreation is not illegal. People use alcohol irresponsibly -- possessing or drinking alcohol is not illegal. In a free society, a thing should only be prohibited if it is such an existential threat that it *must* be prohibited. WMDs fall into this category. Most drugs probably do not.
drugs will always be a problem. because people *always* misuse them
People will always misuse everything and anything, including regulations, because people are imperfect and make imperfect choices, even when they try to make benevolent choices. This is likely true for people who think that banning drugs is a net positive. At the very least, it warrants a dispassionate review of the evidence rather than name-calling and dramatics.
More like "poke the geopolitical equivalent of Justin Beiber with a stick." At best, the government will be like "knock it off, we've got this."
Yeah, things were much better when "reality" was dictated by official proclamations of the church-state.
Prior to the 1980s, the number of women working in computer science was about on par with the male demographic.
False. CS degrees for women peaked in the mid-80s around 35%. It has, however, decreased since then, to around 20%, and even as low as 12% at some schools. Any explanation is speculative, at best. Asserting that women are culturally conditioned to not be interested in computers, though, is actually pretty insulting. It's saying that they're not smart or strong enough to make their own decisions, and that we need to decide what's best for them. If only women had had men to tell them to vote, they might have suffrage by now!
Yeah, all those elderly hooligans are such a menace, what with their muggings, their drive-by's, their suicide bombings, their oh wait, old people don't do those things. Old people with nothing to lose just die.
Not that that would be a reason to ignore the problem except guess what? Women in the industrialized world aren't having children either. And guess what else? Some people don't want to have kids. Perhaps as many as 25%? Maybe more? Have you done a poll lately? Hint: No. This topic is very under-studied, and your explanations are pure speculation.
Perfect. Now we just need a campaign to convince Americans that anime is cool.
To be fair, it also shows that the credibility of journalism has come a long way in 70 years. Back then, rumors, speculation, and opinions were given equal weight and presentation, even within a single article. We don't necessarily need pictures to believe a story today, and pictures aren't necessarily a reflection of reality anyway. It's all about the integrity of, and our trust in, the information sources we use.
Also, there's no interaction here, and this isn't the first instance of computer-generated content making it through human filters. There was an article a while ago about submissions to scientific journals... I think this is the story: http://www.nature.com/news/pub...
In both cases, the content was "complete gibberish," not coherent submissions. These stories don't demonstrate the progress of AI; they demonstrate the low expectations of "meaningful," that judges/editors have in specific circumstances.
That said, there is compelling computer-generated content, such as this: http://www.slate.com/blogs/fut...
If you're overwhelmed by the number of responses to this article, here is the summary:
We all agree that there's a severe lack of science, and to prove it, here's some more.
This is approximately the same arrangement "our" astronauts use at the moment.
Glad you caught that. ;) I, for one, welcome our new flight-pooling overlords.
That's all sort of moot -- people who use drones to actually carry out attacks won't give a shit about any law or regulation. (See, arguably, our own use of drones.)
This is a really hard problem. An attack from a small drone would be incredibly difficult to guard against. I'm actually shocked (legitimately) that there haven't been any attacks using hobbyist drones yet, since it's hard to think of a potential target that wouldn't be vulnerable. With the lower barrier to entry into the airspace (and eventually "space" space, presumably), we're going to have to rethink security of critical systems/people beyond just regulations.
Better yet, why don't we scrap Air Force One and pay Russia for POTUS to take flights on its Ilyushin Il-96-300PU.
I2P is (or seems) good for anonymously accessing eePsites, but it's not particularly useful for general browsing. And as of now there only seems to be one outproxy, which makes it even worse.